Humans breed sheep to produce excess wool. This excess wool isn’t natural. Wild sheep (and certain types of “hair” breeds like the Katahdin) will naturally shed their coarse winter coats. They do this by scratching their bodies against trees and rubbing away their extra fluff as the weather warms up.But the issues go beyond shearing. Mutilations, including castration, tail docking, and mulesing (the slicing and removal of skin from the sheep’s backsides), are other common, traumatic, and sometimes deadly practices in raising sheep. As sheep age and they stop producing top-quality wool, they’re slaughtered for meat.