A VARIED WOOL OFFERING

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30592, 7 November 1964, Page 10

A VARIED WOOL OFFERING

’PHERE will be a fairly wide selection of wools on offer at the third Christchurch wool sale of the season which will be held in the Wool Exchange on Tuesday. Most of the wool is drawn from Canterbury and Marlborough—there is little from the West Coast and practically nothing from the Chathams—but there is high country Merino, some main ewe clips, wool off dry sheep and a significant showing of hogget wools. The high country Merino wools are described as being of fair length and reasonably well grown and showing little colour. Some of this wool is from properties in Marlborough and this wool is also said to be of good style with little yoik discolouration and not as moity as usual. Represented Halfbred and Corriedale wools off North Canterbury and the coastal areas of the province are strongly represented in the offering. The difficult year for wool growing is showing in the fairly general dusty condition of wools, but one representative of a brokering firm pointed out that this was not a serious defect as it would scour out.

Many farmers are still reporting that their clips are jib or more per head down on last year’s lighter clip, and lower weights have even been reported off irrigation country where it might have been expected that the impact of the protracted dry conditions would have been less noticeable. The picture is still one of weights varying from farm to farm rather than from district to district due to variations in feeding, but one observer pointed out

that even where farmers had obtained about the same bulk of wool as usual it was not as high yielding. Wools are inclined to be a shade heavier in condition. One of the characteristics of the clip is that wools are frequently not so well grown. Nevertheless some very good woods are included in the selection, but on the whole the offering is rather of average to good style. Some of the hogget wools are reasonably well grown, but dust is again in evidence and apparently in some quarters there is a feeling that shifting of sheep on and off turnips has accentuated this problem. A representative of one firm of brokers said that wool

off aged Border Leicester Romney sheep was now reaching the market for the first time and was rather shorter in the staple than from straight Romneys. The spokesman for another firm noted that far too many people seemed to be shearing sheep with about eight or nine months’ wool on and after a bad season for wool growth, which had accentuated the shortness of the staple, it looked as though there would be too much of this shortish wool about. A comment on the good side heard about the stores was that brands were now very hard to find and the words “no brands” were now becoming part and parcel of the description of many clips.

An absence of combing wools has also been noted. This is also believed to be due to the season. In many instances faced with tight feed conditions farmers have culled the odd dry ewes or late lambers and sold them so that there is not the deep robustly grown wools that are expected off the 4 or 5 per cent of dry sheep. What little West Coast wool there is, is showing the effects of the season. Details of all catalogues were not available yesterday, but the order of sale is: New Zealand Farmers’ Co-opera-ative Association, Dalgety and New Zealand Loan, National Mortgage and Agency Company, Ltd., and Pyne, Gould, Guinness Ltd.