SKINS AND PELTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22349, 21 February 1936, Page 19

SKINS AND PELTS

METHODS OF PRESERVATION If attention to details is a feature of the Bheep farm management, all skins and pelts saved during the year will have been painted with an arsenical powder dip paste, or other preservative and preventative of the attacks of weevils. The skins also will have been dried under cover of the woolshed, where they are best spread out on the battens of the night pens until they are sufficiently dry to stack in a heap. If these have not already been disposed of, they should now be sorted into "full-wool" and "half-wool lots and so on, and baled accordingly. The easiest method of baling skins is to attach two six or eight-foot lengths of 3in. x 2in. to two adjacent studs in the woolshed. The 3in x 2in. s .should be bored at one end to take a bolt, which is also passed through the studs about 2ft. above the floor level. The hoop-iron bands taken off the bundles' of wool-packs are then placed on the floor, one under each lever, or if these are not available, wire mav he used. On these the skins neatly folded, are piled until sufficient for a bale of about 2 cwt—2s to 30 full-woolled skins—cin be pressed down with the levers and the tics secuied. This is a simpler method of baling skins than using the wool press. When not required the levers can be either tied up against the studs or detached and stored in some corner.