By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor

Texas will soon have the largest wool testing facility in the nation.

The American Sheep Industry Association (ASI) partnered with the Texas A&M University AgriLife Extension Service’s Bill Sims Wool & Mohair Research Laboratory in San Angelo to build a testing lab that can service the entire nation’s commercial wool testing needs.

Currently, most of the U.S. wool industry relies on a lab in New Zealand for testing, according to ASI President Benny Cox.

There was a dire need for a U.S.-based lab to test properties such as fiber diameter, length and strength, as well as calculate clean wool content and scoured yields.

“Angus McColl’s group [Yocum-McColl Testing Laboratories] in Denver was the wool testing lab for most people for the longest time. But now Angus is 92 years old, and they didn’t have a transition for someone to take that over,” Cox said in an interview with the Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network. “Texas A&M University has a research center just north of San Angelo, which had a wool lab, but it was not big enough to service the entire industry.”

Although a few other universities have sheep and goat research centers or facilities, Montana State University and Texas A&M are the only two academic wool labs remaining in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Sheep Industry Improvement Center.

Texas is the top sheep-producing state in the nation, with USDA data showing a statewide inventory of more than 730,000 head at the beginning of 2020.

It’s fitting that the lab will be located near San Angelo, said Cox, who is the sheep sales manager at Producers Livestock Auction Company, the largest sheep and goat auction in the nation.

That’s because the majority of Texas sheep are raised in the South Central and Hill Country areas, where the hardy animals thrive in the mostly arid but temperate climate.

Although there has been a shift in sheep production over the past few years toward more hair breeds, which are raised for meat, wool production remains important to the Texas sheep industry. In 2018, the latest year for which values are available, wool production contributed $3.17 million to the state’s economy.

ASI is helping purchase equipment for the new testing lab, which should be fully operational by 2022.