Wool Clip 2017

One of the advantages of having Arapawa Sheep is that they only need to be shorn once a year.. which saves time and money, but 2018 is our biggest shearing day so far... 26 sheep. It's feeling like a farm more and more every day.

In preparation for the big day, we built another small pen with a deck, creating a flat, smooth surface which the shearers could work from. The idea was to make it an easier job for the shearer, and then it would hopefully be easier on the sheep with less cuts & nics. Plus with the way the land falls, we can now back the trailer up to the pen to load and unload the sheep when moving them.

I was up at 6am, rounding up the sheep... (I'm even sounding like a farmer), getting the sheep into the pen, which not an easy job. Overtime the sheep have learned that going into the pen generally means it isn't going to be a fun experience for them, so they tend to avoid the pen at all cost with some even jumping the fence when I do get them in. I've tried to create some positive experiences for the sheep & the pen by also feeding them the sheep nuts in the pen, I'm not sure if it works, they love the nuts, but it still took me half an hour to get them in the pen today.

Sheep Ready To Be Shorn:

Our Shearer... Doing The Hard Work:

Something I learned today... 

I paid the shearer $10 per sheep for the full cut. I had heard the rate is normally $7-$10 per sheep. To me this is a bargain, given how hard, physical and dangerous the work is. I learned today that farmers only pay $0.60 cents per sheep when crutching them, (shearing around the butt) but the shearer prefers $0.80 cents per sheep. So my hat goes off to all the people working in this business... Bloody Hard Work For Such Small Rewards.

My job was to catch, more like wrestle with the sheep, and then to handover the sheep to the shearer... but I couldn't help myself by stealing a hug with a lamb.

All Done... Sheep Back In Paddock.

And then it was time for me to have an afternoon nap... I'm buggered!