SHEARING THE RAM........er, WETHERS

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to a friend's farm just outside town to experience - and photograph - the process of shearing sheep, neither of which I had done previously. Thanks for the invitation, Trevor!

I had seen sheep being shorn a few times but never in a proper shearing shed, so it was almost all new to me. I hope you enjoy my little photo-narrative that gives a brief insight into the 'mystery' of sheep-shearing, Aussie style!

To set the scene, I arrived at the suggested time (9.30a.m.), as the two shearers, Shannon and Ben and the other workers, Barry and his two sons, Garry and Trevor, were having their first 'smoko' of the day. They had started at 7.30, and this shearing period is called a 'run'. There are four 2-hour runs in a shearer's day.

There was a fairly small mob of 200 wethers to be shorn on the day, which is why there were only two shearers. Wethers are neutered male sheep, some of which are kept on farms for their wool, as in this case. This mob came from the hilly, forested part of the farm, so some of the fleeces would have foreign matter, such as small twigs, etc. embedded in them but these are separated from the fleece on the wool table.

Oh, and FYI (for us oldies, that's For Your Information), if, like me, you had the idea that all the sheep on a property are shorn at the same time, after which the shearers move on to the next 'shed'.........well, it doesn't work that way any more - around here at least. As Trevor explained to me, the sheep are shorn in four batches at different times of the year.

So, settle back, relax and read the story of one small 'shed' near Grenfell, N.S.W., Australia:

(Note: As all the images shown are thumbnails, please click on any or all of them to see the full-sized version, which should come up very quickly.)

Ben and Shannon (right) have just started up again after smoko.

As you can see, they start by shearing the sheep's belly. This wool is placed in a special bin, because it is usually dirtier than the rest of the fleece and can have burrs, twigs, etc. in the wool.

Shannon is onto the legs now, while Garry and Trevor wait for the fleece.

Here you see how well the harness supports the shearer's body and relieves the stress on the back during shearing.

In the holding pen in the background are some of the mob of wethers, patiently awaiting their turn to be the centre of attention. Patiently but not happily, I suspect!

Here's another shot that shows the harness well......

There's even a spare harness on the wall in the background.

Close your eyes, mate!

Have you noticed the shearers' footwear? Moccasins are preferred by many shearers, as they are quite comfortable to wear and have good grip on the boards, which can be slippery, due to the lanolin from the wool.

Ben has started anotheree........

......while Garry, Barry and Trevor still have not much to do!

Shannon's nearly finished another wether. A sizeable fleece!

When the shearer is finished, the roustabout picks up all the wool......

.....and 'throws the fleece' onto the wool table......

......where it's all hands on deck for 'skirting the fleece'.....

.....which means removing all the really dirty wool from the edges of the fleece. The dirty wool is put in a special bin by itself, as it has to be cleaned.

Then the qualified wool classer, in this case, Trevor, checks the fleece and does a rough test of its strength, as shown in this shot.

After that, the fleece is bundled up and placed in the appropriate wool bin nearby.

Here's Garry loading a fresh wool pack into the wool press. The wool table is right behind him.

Meanwhile, one of the sheep dogs (Kelpie) is almost asking the lads for some work!

There's quite a lot involved in pressing the wool into the bale, sealing the bale and marking it with the correct identification.

Here's Garry at the press, starting that process.

The press pushes down the wool, where it is held in place by several steel spikes that are deployed from each side of the press.

The weight is checked on the electronic scales. There's no actual weight limit but, if a bale is over 204 kilograms, the owner has to pay an extra re-handling fee, so this one is definitely full enough! Also, there's a minimum weight of 110 kilograms.

The flaps at the top of the bale are held together with small steel hooks. After that, the gate at the back of the press is released......

....then the bale is manhandled partway out of the press, so that Garry can mark the label with the appropriate identification.

Then Garry gets the bale onto a trolley, finishes marking it with ID and wheels it to the correct spot in the shed. 

Here's a close-up of the label.......

The 'K' signifies the family name; Melyra is the property name; 'AAA' is the grade of the wool, i.e. very fine; and 'M' is for merino, the breed of sheep.

Here's just a couple of other interesting things in the shed:

This is the special broom that's used to sweep up the small pieces of wool that find their way to the floor. The broom has no hair, just a flat surface, which works best for the job!

This shows some of the foreign matter that is sometimes found in a fleece.

You MUST see this one in the larger size!

The shed is not a purpose-built shearing shed. It was bought by Barry and his brother, Alan, many years ago in Cowra, where it was an army storage shed. Each girder, floorboard, support, etc. was marked with an identification number, before the whole thing was pulled apart and transported the 60 kilometres to its current location, when it was re-assembled. Amazing! The floor, however, was from an old hardware store and the rows of ruts in the floor, shown in this photo, are where the staff behind the counter stood to serve their customers. Definitely not hardwood!

One last shot of the actual shearing. The sheep seems quite relaxed!

Finally, here are some of the wethers in a holding pen behind the shearing shed, after their 'ordeal'. This is actually a panorama made from two images! They mustn't have moved, while I took the second shot!