NZ farmers urge Olympic shearing

[Dead_Parrot]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/6270720/NZ-farmers-urge-Olympic-shearing

When thinking of sheep shearing, the words elite sport don't immediately come to most people's mind.

New Zealand's Federated Farmers is hoping this will one day change with the push for shearing to become the next big Olympic sport.

Federated Farmers Meat and Fibre chairwoman Jeannette Maxwell said shearing was a sport that deserved international recognition and has potential to become a demonstration sport at the Commonwealth Games, or even, the Olympics.

"I can testify to the physical effort shearing takes. People like Ivan Scott, Kerri-Jo Te Huia and our World Championships team are athletes who take it to another level."

[csziggy]

1. Shearing is definitely a specialty

Our needlework group had for our program last Saturday a local woman who dyes and spins her own threads. In the discussion about where various fibers come from, she mentioned that the local people who grow sheep for wool have a shearer that comes down from Illinois every spring. This man travels all over the East half of the country, shearing sheep where ever he goes.

I've body clipped horses for showing and there is no way I could ever have clipped an animal to get the full fleece that a good shearer can. The goal when you shear a sheep is that the entire fleece comes off as one piece, sort of as if the sheep had taken his coat off. It's somewhat important to do that to maintain the staple, or length of fibers, and so the fleece can be "skirted" or the edges cleaned of debris and the shorter fibers from the legs and belly.

[Dead_Parrot]

2. It's good work if you can do it...

Not sure what the rate is in the US, but down here you can expect 2-3 dollars per sheep: A good shearer can get through 200 sheep a day, so if you are prepared to travel (and spend all day holding sheep and smelling of shit) you do quite well...

The record is over 500 in a 9-hour shift, and it worries me that I possess this information.

[csziggy]

3. I bet it is a lot like the farriers

Here, if a farrier can line up stables with a lot of horses in one place, they can make good money. But if they have to travel a lot between places with three or four horses at each, the transportation and travel time make it marginal.

When we were operating a boarding facility, we'd have twenty or more horses and the farrier could do them all in a couple of hours unless he had a custom shoeing job. And even with the shoeing, he'd get a lot done in a short time since he was a competitive shoer and practiced doing a top quality job fast.