An interesting paper from the Textile Society of America "The Aegean Wool Economies of the Bronze Age" by Marie-Louise Nosch of the University of Copenhagen states
"At Knossos on Crete, the palace economy focused on wool as a means of achieving standardized textile products; other secondary products from sheep and goats, such as milk, skins, horn, sinew, lanolin, and meat, only occur sporadically in the palace records. The Knossos palace monitored 100,000 sheep, primarily wethers for optimal wool production since castration provides more homogeneous fleeces. Other flocks of sheep grouped female animals and their lambs. Some 700 shepherds tended these flocks throughout central and western Crete. In the villages, and around the palace of Knossos, ca. 1000 women and children were occupied with a wide range of tasks related to textile production, primarily wool. Each year the Mycenaean flocks provided ca. 50-75 tons of raw wool; after cleaning this amounted to 25-40 tons for textile production. Mycenaeans use logograms to designate a piece of textile, and each of these pieces are woven from 1-10 kilograms of clean wool. Thus the annual yield of raw wool would provide fiber resources for between 2500 and 25,000 textiles."
The economic product from herds must not be eclipsed by that from crops.