MECHANICAL SHEARING

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27628, 7 April 1955, Page 8

MECHANICAL SHEARING

HIGH-COUNTRY RUNS’ PROBLEMS

STUDY BY AUSTRALIAN MANUFACTURER

The hand-shearing of sheep on highcountry runs in New Zealand is a practice of considerable interest to a visiting manufacturer of sheep-shearing machinery. He is interested in the possibility of developing a machine which win leave as much wool on the sheep as hand shearing, to enable them to withstand the rigours of winter. The visitor is Mr G. G. Viftue, chairman of directors of the Moffat Virtue Shearing Machinery Company of Australia.

“You can’t take all the wool off a high-country sheep or It will die. Most machines leave only about one-sixteenth of an inch of wool on the sheep,” Mr Virtue said in Christchurch. Good blade shearers were becoming scarcer all the time, and the development of a good machine would be a peat benefit to high-country runholders.

Mr Virtue was interested in the wldecomb handpiece developed by Mr Godfrey Bowen, the New Zealand Wool Board’s shearing demonstrator. Mr Virtue met Mr Bowen recently, and Mr Virtue will invite Mr Bowen’s comments on any improvement to the handpiece that his firm can devise. His firm' had been interested in shearing for more than 60 years, and had started the contract shearing business in Australia, he said. “In our peak year, we sheared 14,000,000 sheen throughout Australia," said Mr Virtue.