SAN AGNELO, Texas — Big things are happening in Texas agriculture. Sheep ranchers will soon be saving a lot of money on wool production.
A wool testing facility in the works coming to San Angelo will service the entire nation’s commercial wool testing needs, according to former President of The American Sheep Industry Association (ASI) Benny Cox.
“This part of Texas is known as the sheep ranching capital of the county,” said Cox.
ASI partnered with the Texas A&M University AgriLife Extension Service’s Bill Sims Wool & Mohair Research Laboratory in San Angelo to build the testing lab that Cox says will speed the manufacturing process.
Cox said ASI is helping purchase equipment for the new testing lab that aims to make the selling and distribution process more efficient.
In 2019, the only commercial testing lab located then in Denver, Colorado, closed its doors forcing American ranchers to send their wool samples overseas.
Since then, ranchers across the country currently send their wool to a testing lab in New Zealand.
“If you don’t have that testing certificate, you can't sell the wool,” said Owner of Anodyne Wool Terry Martin. “The laboratory analysis of the wool is the basis of how I determine the price.”
The wool testing lab operated by A&M’s AgriLife Extension in San Angelo has conducted testing since it was established in 1985, but has never had the space or manpower to cater to Texas’ commercial needs.
“This is all done by hand right now, but we’re soon getting machines to do all of this for us.” said Senior Research Associate with Texas AgriLife Research Faron Pfeiffer as he washed samples of wools to be tested.
For the last three decades he’s helped conduct research at the San Angelo lab to address the needs of sheep and goat ranchers across the country.
“When we get this new equipment all we’ll have to do is weigh out the sample. It will wash it for us,” said Pfeiffer. “Right now, we have to record the fleece weights, we’ll soon have a QR scanner where we just scan it and it will take the weight off of the scale. Anything we do manually now will be done electronically.”
Martin at Anodyne is excited about that development. His family-owned, San Angelo born business is the largest wool trader in the country and he’s looking forward to keeping his business in America.
Anodyne is the sole supplier of wool for the U.S. Department of Defense. Whenever you see a service member in a formal wool dress uniform, you're looking at wool that sat in his warehouse.
“Spun into yarn and then woven into fabric right here in Texas,” said Martin.
According to the USDA Texas is the top sheep-producing state in the nation. Cox says at the beginning of 2020 Texas alone had more than 730,000 head of sheep.
Pfeiffer says the new testing lab should be in an early phase of operation within the next three months. He’s excited his lab will be a huge benefit to this growing industry and expects it to be fully operational by 2022.
“It’s going to speed-up our operation twice as fast as it has been.” he said.
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