Shearing

Shearing Shearing Throwing the fleece Skirting Ready for baling Wool bales
 Shearing
Did you know? Glossary
Shearing usually happens once a year on a wool • A professional shearer can shear a sheep every Bales — bags of wool that have been pressed
property. Professional shearing teams travel 3–4 minutes. That’s about 140 sheep a day. and ready for sale.
across Australia shearing sheep for a living. • The world record for blade (hand) shearing is Catching pens — small yards in a shearing shed,
Depending on the number of sheep, a shearing held by Jackie Howe. In 1892, at Alice Downs which hold enough sheep for each shearer.
team can include two or more shearers, one or near Blackall, Queensland, he shore 321 sheep Drenching — wool producers give sheep
two woolhandlers and shed hands, a wool classer in seven hours and forty minutes using a pair medicine to protect them from worms.
and a wool presser. of hand shears.
Fibre diameter — the thickness of a single wool
The penner-up • Every bale of wool fibre, measured in microns.
The penner-up brings the sheep in from the contains a brand that
identifies the property Shearing — removing the wool from the sheep
paddocks to the sheep yards, ready for penning
the wool has come from using specially-designed handpieces.
up. They keep the catching pens in the shearing
shed full of sheep, ready for the shearers. and also a brand that Skirting — removing inferior pieces from
indicates the quality of the fleece.
When the sheep have been shorn, they leave the fleece.
the shed, are counted and may be drenched Branding a wool bale
or treated for lice before being taken back to
the paddocks.
The woolhandlers
The shearer The woolhandlers pick up the fleece and throw it More information
Each shearer has a stand, electrically-driven across a large table for skirting.
machine handpiece and a catching pen. Shearers To find out more about shearing, take a look at:
catch a sheep from their catching pen and drag it The wool classer
The wool classer sorts the skirted fleeces and • learnaboutwool.com
to their stand, where they shear the fleece using
the handpiece. wool pieces into five main categories — fleeces,
necks, pieces, bellies and locks.
First they shear the belly and then the body,
which comes off as one piece of fleece. Fleeces are also sorted into lines (groups)
according to their fibre diameter (quality). The
fleeces are placed in nylon bags and pressed in
Fleece a woolpress to make bales. The bales are sealed
The bulk of the wool
from the body. and branded, ready for sale.
Wig
Wool from
the front
of the face. • The fastest shearer in the shed
Pieces
Short or sweaty is called the ‘gun’ shearer.
Necks edges from the fleece.
Wool from
under the chin to
Crutchings
Wool from around
• It takes about 35–40 skirted Fun facts
the chest region.
the tail and back
legs, which may
fleeces to fill a wool bale. about
Locks have urine
Short wool pieces
created by shears
Belly
Wool from the
or manure stains. • Once pressed, each bale must shearing
cutting twice over
the same area.
belly area. weigh a minimum of 110kg
and a maximum of 204kg.
Most wool bales weigh in the

4_P_6430DG
Parts of the fleece range of 170 to 190kg.