Let’s face it: sheep are slow. Not their mental acuity, which is sharp a a tack in their proper cultural milieu. I’m referring to their preferred speed of locomotion, which is a saunter, at best. Shepherding brought me right down to earth, quite literally—I’ve been known to fall asleep stretched out on the ground while the sheep rested and ruminated nearby. The sheep also taught me, though I was an embarrassingly slow learner, to take it slowly if I wanted them to graze.
Until recently, though, my concept of slow wool was confined to the need for me to slow down to sheep time, which is essentially endless, and to go with the flow of wind and topography as the flock chose its preferred direction of saunter.
Pearl and me having a snooze during summer shepherding
This winter, though, I’ve added a whole new layer to slow wool—I bought an upright shearing platform. The idea has been around for 20 years, but only in the last couple of years has a combination of larger sheep, smarter tech and an industry-wide shortage of young shearers, finally encouraged the uptake of a machine capable of keeping the shearer upright and the fleece intact. When my shearers of many years (who weren’t interested in learning to use the new tech) retired last year I took the opportunity to make the jump.
Bringing the platform in through the wool shed loading bay with a ‘tele handler’ forklift a neighbour kindly lent me. The platform weighs about 700 kg or 1500 pounds
Since about April, I’ve been working pretty steadily to modify the woolshed so the machine can fit into a space not designed for it, and to ensure the sheep lead-up to the machine works smoothly. With each change, small or large, there is a cascade of other modifications required. As of early August, we were able to use the machine in production mode for the first time, for overdue foot-paring, horn trimming, and a general health check.
The platform on its ‘gurney’ to move it across the shed to its new home on the shearing boards. Once in place, we removed the jockey wheels and the platform became our working area.
The last time I made any major changes to shearing was when I built the shed in 2004. It’s a raised board, meaning the shearers are working on boards that are about a metre higher than the floor of the shed, and about a meter and a half deep. This makes it much easier for the rouseabout to pick up the fleece (no bending down), and throw it onto the wool table. Great design if you're a rouseabout, which is the role I was playing at the time.
Enter a 3 metre long machine. The only way I could figure out to install it is along the boards, rather than across them. So now the sheep come in through a series of ‘no-back’ races (with cleverly designed little gates activated by the weight of the sheep to keep them from backing up) through what used to be a sheep exit door, get shorn in the machine, and exit through what used to be a catch-pen. Even so, there was only just room for the machine itself—no standing room for the shearer.
Some of the no-back races in the lead-up to the boards
So we built a platform, on wheels, which also served to move the 700kg machine from the loading bay across the shed floor to its new home. The platform, though, was not long enough to manage all the activities involved up on the boards, so we extended it. Then added a safety rail. Then a second set of steps from the floor of the shed up to the boards. You get the idea. At times it has felt endless, but not in a good slow sheep way!
Last week, though, we finally finished fiddling around with configurations and improvements, and started shearing. It all worked beautifully, with one caveat—shearing with the platform is much slower than the conventional method—by a factor of 2 to 3. I knew it would be a bit slower, but didn’t anticipate that my 4 days of shearing would stretch out to 10 or 12.
Shearer Jack Monks working on Freddie.
My initial dismay, though, quite quickly morphed into a form of delight—the shearing platform is only slow compared to an insanely fast benchmark—a speed of shearing I’ve always disliked for its impact on the animals, the shearers, the shed hands and even the quality of my wool classing, as there is so little time between fleeces hitting the wool table.
Now I need only one shed hand and the shearer, and in a pinch I can manage without the shed hand. I have all the time I need to skirt the fleece carefully. The machine is air-activated, and much quieter than standard shearing plants. The no-back races mean I don’t have to use dogs to pen up sheep: once started into the long train of races, the sheep just poke along, following the one in front through the clever gates. They are not stressed at all until they are picked up and deposited on their backs in the machine itself. And even there, with all four feet restrained, they settle quickly, and can’t hurt themselves or anyone else in the picture. The machine allows the shearer to be much more careful with shearing, resulting in fewer cuts.
Slow means I only have 50 or so shorn sheep each day to worry about getting hypothermia if the weather turns rough, and there is plenty of room for them back in the shed, alongside the next day’s shearing. My shearer is only available on Thursdays and Fridays, so slow means shearing is a steady but manageable part of my life for 6 weeks, instead of a 4-day marathon, where I start at 5 am to get my chores done, run the dogs, move sheep, get the shed ready, then work the canonical 10 hour day as wool classer, then finish well after dark with stock work, running the dogs, and getting myself clean and fed before falling into bed exhausted.
Slow means with one shed hand, I can duck out of the shed for an hour or two to rest or fill orders without the wheels coming off the well-oiled machine that is a conventional shearing shed, where every cog has to be doing its bit at all times.
Over the years, as I’ve sloughed off the constraints of conventional woolgrowing, I’ve been aware of some of what we lose in the pursuit of modern agricultural methods. This latest lesson, though, is perhaps the most telling: we lose a bit of our humanity when we try to maximise efficiency rather than empathy for the animals in our care.