Shearing
I snuck up to the shearing shed this morning and snapped a few pics for you to see.
Here is a close up of one of our shearers shearing a sheep. Don’t worry, it’s just like a haircut and doesn’t hurt.
Our shearing shed is what is known as a “two stand” shearing shed. That means that we are set up to accommodate two shearers at any one time. At the top of the picture you’ll see two red (ish) coloured motors. They are what is called “shearing plant”. Shearers bring their own handpiece which clips into the shearing plant. Everything is mechanised these days (ie the handpiece runs on electricity).
Many shearers choose to use a “back-aid”. That’s the sling like thing you can see them wearing around their middle. It looks a little bit like a jolly jumper in that it has a kind of spring that allows movement but at the same time gives the body some support and can avoid back injury and strain. It’s quite an art to hold onto the sheep you’re about to shear and get yourself into that sling. Most shearers will shear around 15-25 sheep per hour so it’s quite a lot of times to get in and out of the sling.
Once the entire fleece has been removed from the sheep, one of the shed-hands will pick it up and throw it onto a table (of sorts - it’s a special table designed for shearing sheds).
The wool industry is quite picky about quality. Around the edges of the fleece are bits of wool that are matted and may have prickles and sheep dung attached. The shed-hand “skirts the fleece” by going around and pulling all of those pieces away from the main fleece.
The wool from the top of the sheeps head and it’s belly are also kept separate. They come away as separate pieces and are usually picked up by the shed-hands before the main fleece has been shorn.
Once the fleece has been skirted, it goes into a bale. Once upon a time (and we still have a wool press that is pressed by hand) all baling was done by hand. Now we use an electric wool press. It helps to pack the wool down tight and also gives an approximate weight for the bale. There is a maximum weight that bales are allowed to be.
When the bale is full, it gets closed off with special pins and then marked using a stencil that indicates which shed the bale has come from (we have to be registered) and what type of bale it is (there are different codes for different types of wool).
I ran out of space on my small memory card so I might take some other photo’s later (need to go into town soon) and perhaps do a follow up post to this tomorrow. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I’ll attempt to answer them as part of that post.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to read More on Shearing.
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- More on Shearing
- In the Shearing Shed
- Feeding The Shearers
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Once had a fella give us a 20 minute run down on grading wool - who’d have thought there were so many things to take into consideration?!
So cool! Thanks for sharing!
That was really interesting to see how things are done now as opposed to the old way of doing it. Thanks and looking forward to more pictures!
I had no idea that head and belly fleece was shorn separately. I always thought the whole fleece was shorn in one piece. Why is it separated and kept apart? Is it graded as lesser quality? Where does it go and what is it used for? We learned about wool and shearing in primary school and were all given project cards with little bits of wool in various stages, raw dirty wool, cleaned wool, combed, dyed, finally at the bottom of the card a scrap of woven woollen cloth. I kept mine for years.
My goodness you’re bringing back some memories for me……..
oh great photos!
I’ve never seen anything like it before. Thanks for sharing!
Wow, cool post, very interesting!! It’s always fun to learn about new things, I really had no idea what was involved with shearing, before now. Great photos too
Luv Lil xox
Ok, I’m officially a goose. I didn’t realise that you had a ‘real’, working farm. I thought it was just a cute, hobby kind of farm. This has been a very enlightening post!!
Very interesting. 15-25 sheep an hour? It would take me an hour to get ONE sheep done!
We spent Easter on a small farm near Dubbo but they haven’t had sheep for a while. I thought of you and your shearing post. The shearing shed still stands.
I read it last week but was so busy I didn’t get to comment.
I didn’t know you had a real working farm either.
thanks for sharing.
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I worked in a shearing gang back in 1981. The sling is a great idea - the back is the first thing to go for shearers.