The majority of the world's poorest people live in rural areas as subsistence farmers. Lacking income and resources these subsistence farmers, have little incentive to improve sheep farming practices.
Setting up costs
- Professional quality shears
- Oil stone to maintain the sharpness of the cutting edge
- Vice
- Hacksaw and file
- Shifting spanner to change the angle of the blades as needed
- Pullback to adjust the angle of the handles to the blades
- Grinder to establish beveled cutting edge
- Use of a pendulum or free hand
Professional instructors and interpreters
Internationally experienced Instructors to create effective courses and programmes to suit specific work conditions and needs, possessing the skill to teach men and women living and working in differing cultures - experienced or novice shearers.
We teach commercial and communal farmers to improve the management of sheep at shearing. We teach woolhandlers to improve the presentation of wool for sale and liaise with key organisations.
We provide professional guidance on how to:
- handle and position a sheep
- cut the wool from the sheep to a refined pattern
- reduce the physical effort needed through posture and foot placement
- simplify the technical understanding needed for gear preparation and maintenance
- improvise with limited resources.
Without this, shearing will remain a difficult stressful job for the sheep and for the shearer.
Experience in South Africa - Eastern Cape
Working within the existing infrastructure through the National Wool Growers Association (NWGA) has shown that the supply of technical assistance to improve blade shearing and wool handling skills has an immediate effect on subsistence farmers through increased values in the wool sold.
Training of unskilled farm workers with shearing skills increases their income.
Shearing sheep is a physically demanding job and all participants at the shearing courses showed a very definite willingness to learn in order to make the job easier.
