A WHOLE DAY

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32310, 8 September 1943, Page 3

A WHOLE DAY

TO SHEAR ONE SHEEP EFFORTS OF FOUR MEN Gisborne holds the record for fast sheep shearing with more than 400 m a nine-hour day. A soldier in a prison camp in Germany tells of what must be the world’s record for slowmotion shearing. Private A. Mulligan, of Tokomaru Bay, who has been a prisoner of war since the campaign in Greece, tells the story in a letter to his mother. “There is a country hostel just down from our camp, and the chap who runs it owns a fair bit of land,” the letter states. “Our guards have their meals there. He must have asked the corporal if any of us knew how to shear, because the corporal asked me, and I said I knew a bit about it. Then he said they had four sheep down there. I think it is the first time they have seen a sheep shorn properly. It took me about an hour and a half with a blade shear, whereas last year, they said, it took four of them a whole day to do one.”