Lamb Cut

A couple of weeks ago one of the groomers that reads my blog asked me about how I set the pattern for my Lamb cuts.

I will admit, this cut is the most popular cut in my shop.

A lot of owners like this cut because even though I may take the body short, the Lamb cut leaves the legs a little longer, so the legs don't look like toothpicks.

A Lamb cut can be as simple as a #7F on the body and a #4F on the legs.

In my shop, any cut that leaves the legs a little, or a lot longer than the body, with no skirt or bib, is called a Lamb cut.

  This Cock-a-poo gets a #5F blade on the body and a 3 3/4F blade on the legs.

The legs are still short, but they don't look like sticks.

This Yorkie got a Lamb cut with a short body and  fuller legs.

So, this post is for Jessica and any other groomer that was wondering how I do my Lamb cuts.

I decided to use a white Standard Poodle in hopes that the lines and blending would show better in pictures.

This Poodle comes in every 4 weeks.

He has been bathed and blow dried.

 I start by clipping his body with a #5F blade.

I use the #5F and blend off at the hip and shoulder.

I tend to start off blending up high.

You can always go lower as the cut evolves, but you can't put hair back on if you take the legs too low when you start to blend.

The solid arrows show where I used full pressure.

The broken arrows show where I lifted the blade using a lighter pressure to skim and blend into the leg.

I like to keep the front leg well up above the elbow.

I like the front shoulder  to flow into the leg.

I do not like seeing the elbow stick out.

 Next, I clip the legs with a yellow #0 clip comb.

The lines are still showing on the top of the legs because of the difference in lengthens.

With the Lamb cut you want the the length of the hair on the body to blend smoothly into the legs with no noticeable line.

At this point, on most dogs, I would use either my scissors or my thinning shears to blend the legs into the body.

This Poodles hair is so thick, and I want to blend the legs a little lower, so I take my #4F blade and skim down the top of the legs a little more.

I don't want to use the #5F body blade because the hair left on the legs is so much longer than the hair on the body.

So that I get a nice blend, I start the #4F blade up where I clipped with the #5F.

Then using full pressure I blend the top of the legs, skimming off again.

This way the #4F does more of the blending for me.

You can see that the line is starting to disappear.

 

Next I comb the hair up.

I do this on all breeds.

I will also pluck at the hair, especially at the blend line.

Sometimes I will gently shake the leg to let the hair fall naturally.

Then I scissor the leg to finish.

See, no elbow sticking out.

A nice transition from body to leg.

This side of the dog is finished.

Sorry, I forgot to get a picture of the dog entirely finished.

If you are interested...

~The Body: #5F blade

~The Legs: #0 clip comb and scissor

~The Feet: #7F blade against the grain

~The Face: #7F and scissor

~The Tail: #0 clip comb, scissor and blend to body

~The Ears: Skim with #0 clip comb and scissor to just below the leather

The important part of the Lamb cut is to blend the top of the legs nicely into the body length.

I hope that this helps someone.

I hope you could understand the directions too. :)

Happy Grooming, MFF