What makes felted fleece rugs ethical?
Our felted fleece rugs are also ethical rugs. These rugs look just like their sheepskin rug cousins but the sheep can carry on living to produce one. They’re made only of wool, hard work and lots of love. These ethical rugs are also known as “cruelty free”, “vegetarian”, “no kill” and “sheep friendly”.
They’re a truly sustainable way of using what sheep are best known for; wool. Smallholders like us keep sheep for a number of years, basically until they die of natural causes. Making these rugs is a lovely way to keep the cost down of keeping sheep whilst at the same time making people happy, toes warm and homes cosy.
Ethical shearing
I have heard some question shearing but the fact is, sheep have to be sheared for health reasons. By not shearing a sheep you condemn it to an unhappy life which will probably be shortened by the blowfly. This fly lays it’s eggs in dirty wool and the maggots eat the sheep alive. So shearing is not only ethical, it’s completely necessary. While we are trained to shear our shepp oureslves, we choose to emply top shearers so as the experience, from the sheep’s perspective, is short and sweet.
And what better use of the byproduct, natural fleeces, than to make warm ethical rugs to keep your toes warm. They are pretty much invaluable here in a Scottish winter let me tell you.
Organic and ethical rugs
While we don’t run an organic smallholding (the official label is cost prohibitive), we do everything we can to keep things as natural as possible. We don’t spray our flock so their wool is free from chemical residue. We do use marker sprays from time to time but this is minimal and washes off quickly. Any soaps and detergents used in the rug making process are either organic, or derived from plant products.
To read more about what goes into felted fleece rugs click here.
