Allergic to wool = Allergic to sheep?

I'm getting two female dairy lambs near the end of June. And I just remembered my wife is allergic to wool (as well as everything else under the sun).

Has anyone had experience with wool allergies and sheep exposure?

When building the sheep pen do I need to take extra precautions regarding manure, or wind directions (blowing dander around), etc?

This probably means I'll be the only one milking them....What else do I need to consider?

Renay,

I am no allergist, just an allergy sufferer, so please just take this a recollection of my own experience.

My personal experience has been that allergies to animals is typically an allergy to the dander.  I love my cats, and the fur doesn’t bother me, but the dander can make my eyes water and make me sneeze.  My guess is that if your wife is actually allergic to the wool itself, after being washed and treated, that her allergy to the rest of the animal will be worse.

With that in mind, I would try to isolate the sheep from your wife as much as possible.  Can you somehow filter the air in the enclosure to reduce allergens?  I don’t know about animal waste, but hopefully she won’t come into contact with that anyway.  I am certainly not saying that keeping a sheep is impossible—I have many allergies and find ways to deal with the allergies I can’t avoid—but coming up with some strategy is a good idea in advance.

Good luck.

Eric

As someone with an over active immune system, I know it's horrible to be allergic to everything.  Or what seems like everything.  If you can identify what aspect of sheep she is allergic to, then it will make things easier to adjust for that.

True wool allergies are very rare in humans.   They do exist, but most of the time what we think is a wool allergy is actually responding to something related to the wool.  Like the grease, the texture, or the way the wool has been processed.

Wool is made up of almost the same stuff as human hair.  It's something our bodies already recognize as friendly.  But still, the cut ends can be itchy and if I get a bad haircut with little bits of hair down the back of my shirt, the roughness of the cut ends can be itchy and even cause a rash.  Wool (in this day and age) is removed from the sheep by cutting, and even some people (like me) can be sensitive to the cut ends even in really fine breeds.  This is why Merino is so popular, most people can't feel the cut ends.

Sheep also have two other fibres (three total if we count wool): hair and kemp.  Hair is more like a fir and has a different shape to the cells... basically, the hair fibre isn't curly like wool and is often quite a bit longer and coarser.  We see this, especially in non-industrial and traditional breeds around the back legs of the sheep.  Kemp is a white or transparent fibre which I find really really itchy.  A lot of low-quality wool cloth has this and it definitely gives me a rash.   It feels like someone's rolled the cloth in a briar patch prior to sewing it.

Then there are natural things on the sheep like lanolin, dander, sweat, suint, and of course, my worst nemesis on the farm, the thing sheep eat: hay (or dry grass, usually harvested at the height of flowering - aka creating pollen).  This is the hardest part of keeping sheep for me.  I very seldom feed the hay and stay upwind when the hay is being put out.

The other part of wool allergies - and in my experience the most common cause of it - are the processing chemicals used in industrial wool production.  Chemicals to dissolve vegi matter, remove grease, condition the wool, different greases added back to it for processing, dyes, chemicals related to dyes, more chemicals added to the cloth to make it easier to spin and weave and sew, like sizing.  And some countries require fabrics be treated in extra chemicals like fire retardants depending on the use (which is funny, because wool is a natural fire retardant... but that's a rant for another day). A lot of unlabelled chemicals to react to - both skin exposure and breathing.

If we don't feed Timothy hay, my immune system can handle being in with the sheep and working with the wool.  I have a more mild reaction to the other grasses, but an antihistamine before I do extensive work with the sheep will fix that.  

For me, working with live sheep causes a lot less allergic reaction than wearing commercial wool.  It seems to be that way with a lot of people who visit the farm and say "oh, I have wool allergies, but I'm not reacting to this sheep I'm petting, why is that?"

But very much, it's adapting to the individual's immune system to see what works and what doesn't.  And immune systems can change over time as the amount of exposure changes.

One thing to note, sheep need a lot of airflow so be careful with trying to shut up the pen too much.  Also, not enough airflow can cause mould which is a common allergen (and can harm the sheep).  

I used to have an American friend who was allergic to sheep wool and mutton. She came to India and my corner of it, Ladakh, several times. Both wool and mutton are part of daily life here. Before she came I'd roll up the wool carpet that was the usual seating. If mutton affected her too, then it can't just have been dander. I think she said lanolin and lanolin based lotions were also bad for her