Shearing..........

Well this is the last day of the school holidays and thankfully the last day of the shearing........I had a very bad day of wind yesterday and the umbrella grass swirled around everywhere..........it was a pretty miserable day............today we have had a cold change and winter is in the air.........you northern girls must be sending it our way as you are starting to mention that spring has come.............so this post is about our shearing which has been happening during the school holidays..........book worm would spend every waking hour there if I let him...........and as for fairy girl she went to the shed for the first time today and had a princess tiara on.................the shearers are probably still laughing.............

The sheep are waiting in the shed..................

this is the counter the shearers flick as they pull there sheep out of the pen...........

Here is the handpiece they use to shear the wool off with...............

shearer's supplies...........

here they were on there break yarning over the pens...........check out there feet

shearing the sheep...........

nearly done...........

the rousabout gathers the fleece ready to pick up and take to the wool table...........

Throwing the fleece onto the wool table...........

and another..........

the fleece is skirted........the edge wool and bad bits (stained) are pulled off and put into a separate pile to bale later.........

the fleece is placed into a bin below and then when there is enough wool to make a bale it goes into the press..............

here is the wool press which squashes the wool into the bale...............

wool bales labeled ready to go onto the truck ...........

here are the sheep all shorn.........

.....they will need to hide in the grass/timber areas tonight as it is going to be very cold ........

they get counted out of there pens and tallied for the shearer and then they are paid according to how many sheep they shear...........

take care til next time.............