Shearing Machine put to the test.

The Shear Express is a Mobile, automated shearing machine - a sequential process of shearing sheep with quality-control at every step. The inventors say the quality of the job no longer depends on the sheerer but on the machinery which collects data on each animal - size, wool yield, health and weight for future breeding decisions. This has never been possible before.
Fred and Rhonda Wybrow were shearing contractors in WA and along with sheep propetry owner Phil Panizza came up with the idea for a sheering machine and built a prototype. The Australian Wool Board (AWB) invested $6 million in the project, saying it was the future for shearing.
Sheer Express is a fully-automated, self-contained system that can be attached to the back of a truck in a B-double configuration. Sheep come out of a pen, are lifted by a forklift, put into a cradle on a conveyor belt and are moved through 7 stages.
There are the prep-stages when skirting are taken off instead of being pulled off at the final fleece-throwing stage as used to happen.
A different part of the sheep is shorn at each station of the conveyor belt - head, crutch, belly wool, then the long plains of the sides. Sheep are then tipped off back onto conveyor belt and out of system. If the farmer wants to draft sheep for any reason, this can be done at this stage. The fleece goes onto a classing table, a fleece-testing machine looks at it, takes IT data on each fleece.
A trial in rural Victoria was to prove the efficiency of the Shear express, but soon after disaster strikes!

[@adamgibson264]

i am in this video good times and i worked on it to the end before it when back to WA

[@jollyroger1009]

Genius. Break shearing into assembly line type steps. This should work well.

[@junipash]

great work as usual though! thank you for your work!

[@junipash]

reminds me of jacques tati's modern kitchen a little bit.. but you also get the sense that in 20 years of course some contraption like that will be how sheep are shorn.

[@RebelFilms]

Ha ha... your on the money there. Tati is one of our favourite filmmakers... total genius. I’m humbled to think we would come close!

[@hobens1]

what was the comparison between manual and semi automated? can't of been great it wasn't mentioned looks like sore backs will be around for a while and I say for a while this technology will work eventually.

[@RebelFilms]

No comparison, just the machine. I don’t think it went ahead. The inventor died a few months after this video was made.

[@nothinyaseehere9449]

Holy crap this is horrible for the sheep!!

[@lastsideshearing]

Still need skilled workers to shear the wool off cleanly without second cuts and trained wool handlers to handle and skirt the fleeces. This is just a semi-automated sheep-handling system that did nothing to improve efficiency in any way.

[@Lauren-vd4qe]

would like to see exactly how it operates instead of a lot of talking heads

[@RebelFilms]

Very complex. The inventor passed away soon after we made this film

[@Bibibosh]

All they need now is a pole to remove the stuck sheep they get caught up in the machinery.

[@RebelFilms]

😂😂😂😂

[@honestheartedtruthseekerso6864]

Don’t they wash the sheep

[@RebelFilms]

Nope

[@santasquirtle7410]

what?

[@antontietze8568]

Ja so ein Blödsinn