Free shearing lessons offer
Free shearing lessons offer
REGISTERED wool producers in Wales are being offered free basic training in shearing in a bid to trim flock input costs.
A major new £120,000 scheme, which links the British Wool Marketing Board, agricultural colleges, YFCs and farming unions, is part of a drive to ensure that Wales has enough home-bred shearers for the 8.6m sheep shorn each year.
The project partners are matching £60,000 of EU Objective 5b cash, but the total will cover the training of people from a relatively small number of the 17,000 registered wool producing farms in Wales. New grant applications are being made to continue free training over the next three years, and to extend it to the rest of Britain.
Contract gangs
"In recent years farmers have come to rely on contract shearing gangs with more than 50% of people from the southern hemisphere," said project director Graham House. "But fewer New Zealanders and Australians are now coming over, and the fall in the wool price is making farmers look very closely at contract shearing costs.
"Changed economics mean it can cost 70p to remove a lower quality fleece worth 30p. New abattoir rules also mean that lambs have to be crutched and have their belly wool trimmed. We have now trained 30 instructors as part of a plan to make Wales self sufficient in shearers by 2003, and to ensure that there is someone on every sheep farm who can use a shearing handpiece."
The new EU funded training programme would complement fee charging BWMB and Lantra courses operated at colleges and through training groups. Successful applicants would receive 18 hours training from instructors who had a wide experience of commercial or competitive shearing and had also been on special first aid and health and safety courses.
150 beginners
The funding available should be enough to train 150 beginners this year to BWMB Blue Seal standard, and improve the skills of a small number of proficient shearers who would like to start.
At the projects official launch at Coleg Powys, Newtown, Colin MacGregor, BWMBs shearing manager, said the carrot of free courses was a welcome incentive, but he hoped farmers throughout the UK would recognise the value of shearing training even where no grant was available.
One of the first of 150 shearing students, Owen Morgan (right) takes advice from instructor Hywel Jones on a new free training course.