MOULTING SHEEP

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12084, 30 June 1932, Page 7

MOULTING SHEEP

RUSSIAN’S CLAIM. The artificial moulting of sheep and rabbits four times a. year, by which the wool or hair peels olf in a compact mass and leaves the body sinotli and shiny as a bald man's pate, is claimed to have been discovered by Professor Ilyin, says the Riga correspondent of The Times. This will produce, according to the Soviet Commissar of Industry, a revolution in the Russian wool industry. He declares that Soviet scientists have achieved a. great victory over the British and Japanese, who abandoned the field of ohemiealising wool-bearing animals. Professor Ilyin gives a sheep a small dose of “heavy metal salts,” which nets oil the sympathetic nerve system. After a few days the fleece can be removed, It will grow again more rapidly than a ter shearing. The professor also claims to he able to make sheen moult in two stages. Firstly, the finer fleeces; then the coarser. Thus, the roughest sheep would yield some fine wool A similar system is applicable to rabbits and dogs. Professor Ilyin has already gained fame with experiments for changing the colour of mbits’ coats by mineral salts. Ho is now specially authorised to organise moulting on a large scale in the chief sheep-roaring districts and rab-bit-farms.