THE SKIRTING OF FLEECES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1195, 2 August 1911, Page 8

THE SKIRTING OF FLEECES.

NEED FOR CAREFUL SUPERVISION. It is still necessary to impress on growers the great desirability of seeing that the skirting of fleeces, if done at all, is carefully supervised, and that, any short, yolky; 'black-tipped fleeces, which happily are fast disappearing from the hc-,t Hecks, now that the Vermont blood has gone out of favour, be kept separate from those more shafty and better conditioned. Such is the comment of .Messrs. Dalgety and Co.'s "Wool Review" in dealing with the preparation of the clip. Continuing, the report says the classing of crossbreds shows an advance towards greater perfection, though many clips, both large and small, continue to be rather carelessly graded and skirted. The first thing to'bo considered in preparing crossbred wool for market is quality, which, as _ all breeders know, varies very much in a crossbred (lock, however well bred the. sheep may be. It has been the experience during sevoral past seasons that some excellent clips missed the American'composition owing to the faulty manner in which the fleeces had been skirted. 'This requires the careful attention of wool-classers, as it is well known that the slightest deviation from the requirements' of the United States representatives very frequently causes the loss of th-sir valuable competition for wool, which may bo hi all respects save one entirely suitable- for their orders. It is frequently argued by growers that their neighbours who do not skirt their wool at all, get equally high prices per lb. This may, and does occasionally, occur, but it must be'reriioriihercd that the man who does not class his wool as a rule (loos not attend to his Hocks. They are frequently under-fed, and consequently produce hunger-fire, light-conditioned wool, which may bring an even higher price per lb. than that from well-attend-ed sheep, but the price per lb. is not the test of merit. It is the average return per sheep.