YEAR 12 students at the Western Australian College of Agriculture, Cunderdin, were enlightened last week on what happens to the college’s wool clip after it goes out the gate.
They also gained an insight into potential career opportunities in a wool industry that has been booming for 12 months and shows little sign of easing off, before spring shearing starts to restock depleted stores.
In March the students mustered and sheared about 1700 sheep from the college’s Merino flock, acted as shed hands and helped prepare the clip, learning on-farm aspects of wool as part of Certificate III in wool clip preparation and novice shearing studies.
On Wednesday last week they toured the Australian Wool Testing Authority (AWTA), Westcoast Wools Pty Ltd’s wool stores and the Western Wool Centre (WWC), all in Bibra Lake, to learn more about wool beyond the farmgate.
At AWTA they watched the testing and measuring regime wool samples undergo to establish technical specifications that help buyers, representing international processing companies, determine which lines of wool they want to bid for.
“I never realised there was as much testing of the wool as there is,” said Phillip McDonald, 17, whose parents Neville and Sue run a sheep feedlot at Beaumont, east of Esperance, and are Westcoast Wools clients.
At Westcoast Wools they saw samples of the college’s wool displayed on the show floor and toured the wool store with auctioneer and director Danny Ryan.
Mr Ryan explained how wool was lotted and prepared for sale, including mechanical combing to untangle cotty wool, and how a garden fertiliser pellet is made as a byproduct of processing daggy wool.
Westcoast Wools also has an export division and Mr Ryan explained how wool was containerised and sent to overseas mills – a process called dumping, where three bales are further compressed and bound together – was no longer preferred when loading sea containers because the wool took time to “recover” at the other end, he said.
“There are lots of smiles about in the (wool) industry because these are good times,” Mr Ryan told the students.
“There are good times ahead and good career opportunities in the industry.”
The final visit was to the WWC to watch another Westcoast Wools auctioneer Brad Faithfull put the college clip under the hammer in a softening market.
Four of the six fleece lines sold, with the top line, 17.2 micron, 70 millimetre staple length lamb and weaner wool, bringing 1193 cents a kilogram greasy.
A two-bale line of dusty fleece was passed in and bidding for a line of 18.9 micron 100mm fleece reached 1036c/kg before it too was passed in.
Students were happy with the results.
“I think we got pretty good prices,” said Jack Oorschot, 17, who comes from a sheep and cattle property at Merivale near Esperance.
Sheep and wool manager Wayne Laird, who with farm technical officer Kylie Iles, accompanied the students, said the college ran a commercial 2500 head Merino flock and a small stud flock of Poll Dorset sheep as a part of its 2524 hectare farm enterprise.
Students were involved in every aspect of maintaining the flock, from choosing breeding stock, through shearing and wool handling to marking lambs in August ahead of a late spring shearing of lambs and rams, he said.
The main shearing in March yielded 51 bales, he said.
Five of the students on the tour will be representing WA and the Cunderdin college at the annual National Merino Challenge in Melbourne on Saturday and Sunday, May 27 and 28.
The five are Daniel Wilmot, Tambelup, Danny Halligan, New Norcia, Chloe King, Mukinbudin, Aimee Tyson, Goomalling and Grace Davey, Konnongorring.
An initiative of Australian Wool Innovation, the National Merino Challenge tests student knowledge of fleece, production, selection and breeding in a series of seven challenges, with a section for secondary college students and one for tertiary students.
Westcoast Wools is helping sponsor the Cunderdin college team.
Mal Gill
Wool and dairy writer for Farm Weekly.
Wool and dairy writer for Farm Weekly.
