WOOL AWAY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20261, 9 November 1935, Page 15

WOOL AWAY

SHEARING TIME QUESTION OP BIG TALLIES The broken weather during the past fortnight has been anything but shearing weather as no sooner are the sheep dry than another shower comes along and puts things back. The weather frequently breaks about Timaru Show time and the past week has been very broken with rain coming from the southwast. It is always advisable, when conditions are changeable and there is little shelter about, to keep the sheep under cover for the first night. They will then have got over the shock of losing their wool and be better able to withstand the rough spell. Broken shearing weather is both annoying to the shearer and the farmer, who, not only has to keep his sheep handy to the woolshed in catchy weather, but is anxious to push the work through expeditiously, and avoid as much as possible, knocking his ewes and lambs about through too much yarding. On most sheep stations the prolongation of shearing for many weeks on account of bad weather is somewhat of a nightmare. The usual thing is to make the most of fine weather and it is the shearers who set the pace. Question of Big Tallies Many of the sheep station owners in_ Australia have become convinced that the encouragement of big shearing tallies is a serious mistake, and a new system that has been set going at Booroomugga Station, New South Wales, is described in a recent issue of the “Pastoral Review.”. It is based on a universal tally average of 100 sheep per shearer, per day, in average flock sheep, and is worked as follows: The boss arranges with the shearers’ tallyman the maximum number of sheep to be shorn per day, per man, in each particular flock, according to the class of sheep, namely, heavy wool wethers, 80 to 90 per day; easy shearing ewes and lambs, 110 to 120 per day. The tallyman, who is one of the best and fastest shearers in the team, regulates the pace and is supplied with a clock, which is opposite his pen. When the whistle blows, each shearer enters his pen, catches, and proceeds to shear. If any man finishes his sheep before the tallyman, he must not again enter his pen before the tallyman. The work is thus carried on throughout the whole of the working hours, with results that have satisfied shearers as well as owners of the sheep. They are set down as follows:

(1) The sheep are carefully handled and clean shorn. (2) There is a reduction of at least 75 per cent, of second cuts in the wool, that should be bringing the highest consequently very little of the wool price is going into the table locks, which brings the lowest price in the clip.

(3) The sheep are not slashed and cut in the usual manner—often put down the chute with a split penis, or minus a teat. (4) The shed hands are not unduly rushed, as is the case when easy sheep —ewes and lambs—come Into the shed; consequently the wool clip is better skirted, better classed, pieces picked better, and the press not working half the night to get the bins cleared for the following day. (5) Two to four ounces more wool are obtained from each sheep. (6) It allows the correct number of sheep to be brought in for each day’s shearing, which does away with confusion in mustering, and no sheep are kept in the yards longer than is necessary.

(7) It allows the correct number of shed hands to be estimated before shearing commences.

No doubt some arguments against the system can be produced, but none of them can be held in face of the very satisfactory experience of the Booroomugga Station. The “Pastoral Review” finishes the account of the system by stating: “Another fact to be seriously considered is that this universal tally system is going to provide employment for a longer shearing Season each year than under the old ‘go hell for leather system,’ thus keeping a large number of men in employment who would otherwise be idle.”