Toni grew up on a sheep farm, now she never wears wool.
Toni Gundry grew up on and around sheep farms that bred the animals for wool and when it was most profitable to slaughter them, for their flesh - sheep farms like any other. After everything she has seen, Toni never wears wool. In fact, she does not wear or eat any animals.
Collective Fashion Justice is grateful for Toni’s openness in sharing some of what she experienced and witnessed growing up on farms.
Can you explain what some of the standard practices on the farm were?
‘Lambs are born in late winter. Ewes generally can’t support more than one lamb and regularly have to abandon a lamb if they have twins. This lamb dies alone, cold and hungry in the paddock. Sometimes, but not often, a farmer will find the lamb and bottle feed them.’
‘At a few months of age the lambs are penned and one by one are put into a cradle. Here they have their tails cut off, the skin around their bottoms sliced off, ears tagged… if they are male their balls are cut off and ripped out as well. There is no pain medication and no stitches. They are simply thrown off the cradle and left running into the paddock with blood spurting from their once tail. They run off into the group of mothers who wait for their babies. This process is much the same for all the farms I worked in.’
Can you explain how farms are producing wool and meat?
‘These sheep are bred for two things. Wool and meat. A ewe [female sheep] doesn’t live past three years of age. She will have some babies and produce many kilograms of wool before being sent to slaughter herself. Wethers (castrated male sheep) won’t make it past their first year. They are generally the lamb cutlets you eat.
Sheep in Australia have been selectively bred over 200 years to produce high quality wool, long wool, and to be ‘good for eating’. A two in one deal. The merino sheep is ‘fantastic’ for this.’
What is the shearing process like?
‘Shearing time. All sheep are penned. Herded into the sheds. I worked with many farmers that won’t hire certain shearers because they cut the sheep too much or are too cruel. Excessive beating of the sheep. But some didn’t care.
When I was 13 my father stopped me from working during the shearing time because of the swearing and violence that happens… he didn’t want his daughter to experience it. But when I was 15 I started working for other farmers as a rouseabout [Australian slang for odd-jobber, particularly on a farm or in a shearing shed]. Sweeping, bagging and throwing fleeces, and refilling pens.’
How did you feel about your work on the farm?
‘It’s hard to say what was the most confronting thing about working on the farm… we are brought up with the death and abuse of animals. We are taught it’s natural, it needs to be done. We are taught their dollar value. So you see a baby lamb, dead in a paddock or crying for their mother and you’re taught to dismiss it.
‘Stupid sheep, when a shearer of farmer hits of kicks a sheep it is the sheep’s fault for not doing what the farmer wants. ‘Stupid sheep’.
When working for one farmer, our lunch break during mulesing was around a fire which was burning the remains of the sheep’s tails and balls. I did ask once about the lambs limping off after mulesing. My heart broke. The farmers reply, "they’re just stupid sheep”.
The only time the farmer cared when was I filled a pen too full with lambs. This was the catching pen where I caught the lambs to put in the cradle. The lambs are scared and separated from their mothers, huddled together as far from me as possible. They crushed and suffocated two smaller lambs to try and get away from me. This devastated me. Half because I killed them. Half because the farmer was mad. I cost him money. Death happens in pens and runs all the time. We are in so much of a hurry to fill a truck or a pen, and the ‘stupid sheep’ don’t go the way we want. Injuries and deaths occur. If they limp off they are left with no medical attention. They can’t limp - they have their necks broken, or are shot in the head.’
Did you have to block off your feelings?
‘You did have to block it off because it was taught that they are just ‘stupid sheep’, that it was natural for you. It wasn’t hard once you regarded them as nothing. You even start swearing at them. You are taught if they sheep aren’t running give them a whack. And if you spoke up against it, especially being a girl, you are weak, being a princess or soft. And you didn't want to be teased. You wanted to make your family proud, you wanted to be tough, to be a good worker, get praise. You’re cool if you want to get your gun license young. You’re a man if you can make the sheep run the right way with a yell and a kick.’
How did you begin to reconnect with animals as individuals?
‘One of the horrible parts of growing up on a sheep farm was killing our own. It was a family and friends’ event. Neighbours would come over and we would kill sheep together. Us kids thought it was fun playing in the guts of the dead sheep. My brother would chase me with the bladder.
Any connection you had with the lambs you bottle fed as a kid were severed. But I started making a connection during the killings. Not all farmers do it, but we did it because we were poor. It fed the family for a year.
Seeing those sheep lay there and kick for 15 minutes or more after having their throat slit, I remember getting the courage and saying I can’t watch this anymore'. I don’t care if I’m soft.’
Does your past work on the sheep farm still impact you?
‘Sheep farming only affects me now in my private life. My family still live and work on sheep farms, and my brothers and nephews work at abattoirs. So as a vegan they think I’ve lost the plot and am going after their incomes. I no longer speak to or have anything to do with my family. I don’t wear wool.’
Today, Toni is a postie, delivering people’s mail and care packages to each other from all over. She is vegan, and spends a lot of her time caring for guinea pigs and fostering rabbits who have been rescued, through The Rabbit Sanctuary.
The importance of Toni’s story
What Toni shared with us is an important reminder as to why we must work towards a total ethics fashion system. We know that wool is a cruel industry which abuses and kills sheep. But we also know, and are reminded, that the industry can have a severe impact on the humans made to work amongst this cruelty. Connection and empathy towards other species of animal, between human and other — like sheep, like dogs, like singing birds and other free living animals — is natural. Acting out of alignment with this connection can be extremely straining.
What can we do?
As a designer, you can pledge to move away from animal-derived materials. Please contact us if you are interested in this.
As a citizen, you can avoid buying animal-derived materials in fashion, and you can use your voice to encourage change from the brands around you, while engaging with other people who may like to learn more, too.
As someone who today or previously has worked in the system producing animal-derived materials like wool, leather and down, you can reach out to us about sharing your story – whether anonymously or otherwise, whatever you are comfortable with.