WITHIN five months of seeing his first sheep, Sudanese refugee Abe Gwada was shearing 100 superfine Merinos per day.
His accomplishment was made possible because of a revolutionised shearing cradle which was recently trialed during the harvesting of wool from 22,000 Merinos which averaged 16.4 micron and 4.4 kilogram fleece weight.
Operating across four properties, covering 1680 hectares in the South West Slopes of NSW, between Tarcutta and Tumbarumba, Grant and Annette Burbidge join 12,000 ewes annually.
In 2000, the Burbidge’s upgraded their shearing shed with the hope the industry would invest in innovating the labour-intensive shearing practice.
“I hoped the shearing shed set-up would be superseded within five years - 16 years later we still haven’t got anywhere,” Mr Burbidge said.
“You look at every other industry they’ve made productivity gains when harvesting - no longer does a potato farmer use a fork.
“I got sick of waiting for someone else to do it.”
Inspired by West Australian-based Andrew Wytkin’s upright position shearing platform (UPSP) in the 1980’s, the Burbidges have developed a system which removes the physical handling of the sheep.
Sheep are automatically tipped from a raised race, into a cradle on their backs and then shorn using a conventional handpiece.
The system was tested last year using unskilled labour, including backpackers, who handled 22,000 sheep in 20 weeks. This was up from the Burbidge’s usual nine-week shearing attribute to the increase training required.
“We found all our initial labour online, including Abe, who had no sheep or hand piece skills or shearing at all,” he said.
“Over five months he became the most skilful shearer we had, shearing and skirting 100 fleeces per day.”
The shearer shortage and the aging woolgrower demographic have been touted as the main reasons why there's demand for shearing support machines.
“There are less people who want to do that hard, physical work,” Mr Burbidge said.
“This is a method of de-brawning it to have less physical attributes, at the same time we can increase the skill levels of people so we end up with better quality assurance.”
In 2006, ShearEzy was commercialised which was partly funded by Australian Wool Innovation’s (AWI) $13 million, three year investment to develop new technologies for shearing.
Mr Burbidge has received no outside funding and said his design was an easy-to-use, simplified system which had the potential to process about 170 sheep per day with a skilled operator.
“Every other industry is making productivity gains, the wool industry isn’t,” he said.
“Other industries have progressed with auto-steer, GPS (global positioning systems) - everything is faster and shinier - however the wool industry is lacking in innovation.”
Mr Burbidge does not intend to commercialise the UPSP.
