Shearing

The before picture

The after picture

We’re shearing this week. We spent the weekend mustering the sheep; the dogs really earned their dinner having to find 500 sheep in groups of 20 or so, spread out  over 2000 acres of steep hills and gullies. Some of our sheep seem to have some lemming in their breeding, on a couple of occasions, one would plunge down a hill nearly steep enough to call a cliff, causing a slight detour for the rest of the mob, plus us. In the end we were able to bring them home and get them in the yards behind the wool shed.

Mick, our shearer, almost seems to dance with the sheep as he shears his way through over a hundred sheep per day. He starts with the sheep upright between his knees, then lays them flat on the floor and rolls them over bit by bit simply by shuffling his feet around in an arc, presenting a new area to shear with each movement. When he is done and lets the sheep go, the entire fleece lays in one piece on the floor, where it can thrown onto the table to be sorted.