SMALL GROWERS’ WOOL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 303, 7 December 1931, Page 10

SMALL GROWERS’ WOOL

FAULTY CLASSING. LOWERING THE PRICE. Faulty classing is a very big factor, perhaps more important that most people think, in lowering the price of wool. One does not often find the owners of big clips doing their work ineffi ciently, but the clips of small growers are too frequently marketed in bad order, states the Christchurch “Sun.” This is to be regretted, because each season there is an increasing number of small clips z which are becoming a very important factor in the New Zealand wool trade, and on this account every effort should be made to place them on the market in the best possible condition. It should be remembered that it is the desire of buyers to handle the clips with confidence and without loss of time, and until his wool is marketed in a manner that enables buyers to estimate its value accurately, the small grower cannot hope to obtain full value for it. It sometimes happens that spinners would purchase at full values certain good wool, which, because it is improperly classed, is now passed over by them and bought by merchants who rcclass the wool in Europe before reselling it jto manufacturers. There is an all-too-common impression that only experts can arrange wool for sale. This may be true in regard to large clips, but with small clips no great expert knowledge is needed. With ordinary common sense any grower, after receiving a little instruction can make a good job of classing his clip. Wool brokers can help by .giving expert advice and also by paying more attention to the pooling of oddments and mixed bales of fleece wool. This, in fact, is the crux of the whole job. because a grower with a small clip can make one or two lines of wool above star lots reasonably even in type and quality by rejecting a small percentage of fleeces that will not match. But this system must result in obtaining one or more bales of very mixed quality and condition, and these odd bales should be pooled or else they cannot be sold to advantage, because small lines of mixed wool are sure to be bought by the dealer who must make enough out of them to pay the cost of repacking and grading as well as a profit. All the faults in marketing small clips are not confined to bad classing. Many of them can be traced back to gross carelessness during shearing, and also to the lack of ordinary conveniences in the shearing shed. For example, it is not uncommon to shear and pack the wool without a box press or even a rolling-table. There is no excuse for anyone to do the work under these conditions, because box presses rolling-tables, and other wool-room fittings can all be home-made at little expense. Once a time of shearing is fixed it should be adhered to year after year when possible, because most sheep will produce wool of correct typo and length at 12 months’ growth, and much over or under 12 months may result in a clip that is not true to type. When possible, all sheep should be crutched just before shearing, when they are dirty, because a quantity of “dag” and stains on the shearing board is not only objectionable, but may easily result in clean wool becoming stained and thereby reduced in value.