During Term 2, a group of students made inquiries about a shearing course. Through the help of the Careers Department and Mr Dunnett, a course was found though Te Ako Wools and the Gateway Programme. 

Te Ako Wools is an industry owned association that offers Gateway courses of crutching, shearing and wool handling for predominantly young people looking to get involved in the industry. On the 26th of June, eight Year 12 and two Year 13 students including myself, left Adams House with Mr Dunnett bound for Broomfield, Amberley. 

After an hour drive, the boys arrived at the shed where we were greeted by Wayne the instructor. Once the health and safety issues were discussed, we began to go over the required gear needed for shearing, and the expectations of working in a team environment. The first day was theory based and involved us moving location to the Amberley library to fill out paper work based around course. These papers included the necessary steps taken to work in the industry as well as the requirements and unspoken rules of the industry. 

Day two was all practical and after learning how to grind and sharpen our allocated gear (1 comb and 8 cutters) we then started to go over the basics of crutching as Wayne and his mate demonstrated on the sheep provided by the farmer. After the demonstration, we went straight into trying for ourselves under the watch of the Wayne and his co-worker. The shed had a raised 3 stand board which meant we split into two groups of 3 and one of 4. There were 250 sheep that had to crutched by us that day. We were left to go to work and as we crutched, tips and techniques were given and discussed that improved our crutching greatly. 

Every now and then we would stop and Wayne would go over the technique and process again in order to try improve our flow and blows with the handpiece. Everyone dramatically improved as the day went by, and sheep numbers became smaller. By 4:00 pm all of the sheep were now in the catching pens. With just two remaining sheep left in our pen, we handed it over to Mr Dunnett to finish. With all the sheep being crutched we cleaned up the woolshed and did an evaluation of what we learnt during the course. We also discussed when we would be able to do a shearing course as we couldn’t shear the sheep during winter for obvious reasons. Overall, all of the lads learnt a variety of skills involved in the wool industry and I know we went away with a much improved confidence in crutching.

To check out a few pictures of the boys in action, click this link.