LOSSES THROUGH BAD SHEARING.

Southland Times, Issue 2019, 18 November 1874, Page 3

LOSSES THROUGH BAD SHEARING.

A writer in a Yictoriaa paper says : — Few persons realise the losses sustained through bad or careless shearing. I have been assured by a large sheep-owner that with a too easy superintendent he had calculated that he had lost, the year before last, sixpence on every sheep shorn, op £1200 on the whole of his flock. This is perhaps an extreme case, but in another instance, in my presence, a squatter in the south took one of the shorn sheep from the pen wheu being counted out, and by re-shearing obtained nine ounces of wool from it. In Jreply to my query, this gentleman asserts that the wool so left on the backs of the sheep is lost, for it comes off in streaks afterwards. Not a season passes but we notice especially or exceptionally high prices for certain bales. The auctioneers tersely explain that these are " well got up," that is, besides quality, they have something else to recommend them. Judges who have been shearing on the continent and in England invariably state that not one- half the Bheep ia this colouy are properly shorn, and that we lose sixpence per fleece thereby. A gentleman well posted on the subject says : — " The flockraaster wants a large capital in the purchase and improvement of sheep, spares no expense, no toil, no care in putting on his flocks the best fleece that they are capable of bearing, washes them with soap and hot water, by means of an, expensive apparatus, and brings them into the shed in as perfect a condition as possible ; and when there a careless, nasty, or unskilful shearer so mangles both sheep and wool, that a considerable portion of the squatters' labor and expense is thrown away." If flock masters would only consider that while they pay 3a (id to 4s per score for shearing, and loso 3d to 6d per fleece, or from 5s to 10s per score, through " tomahawking" aud " camping," some active steps towards reform would perhaps take place. Vrova what I have written it will be seen that the losses arise from two causes. First, through leaving too much wool on, and causing broken fleeces, with " under and over" cuts ; and secondly, through brutal carelessness by injuring the sheep in cutting off skin and wool. Last year, when there were 18,000,000 sheep in the Colony, we estimated at a low calculation, the losses through these combined causes were not less than a quarter of a million sterling.