Sheep in Farmstead World — animal in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
Sheep are woolly ruminants kept for wool, meat and milk, and they graze close to the ground in flocks.
Their fleece grows continuously and is shorn once a year, so a flock turns pasture into fibre as well as lambs.
Farm facts about sheep
Sheep were domesticated from wild mouflon in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago, kept first for meat and milk and later bred for wool. (en.wikipedia.org)
A sheep's fleece grows continuously rather than in a season, so a flock must be shorn at least once a year for the animal's own health. (en.wikipedia.org)
Sheep and goats are close cousins but never match: a sheep-goat hybrid is real but always infertile, which keeps the two species apart. (en.wikipedia.org)
Wool is graded by fibre diameter in microns — a micron is a thousandth of a millimetre — and anything under about 20 microns feels soft against the skin. (pubs.nmsu.edu)
Wool can be worth up to 20% of a sheep producer's annual income, which is why flock masters watch the shearing season so closely. (pubs.nmsu.edu)
Raw wool shrinks when washed because much of its weight isn't wool: grease, dirt and burrs can leave a fleece yielding only 40-70% clean fibre. (sheep101.info)