Talk:Crutching

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[edit] POV template

This article desperately needs the attention of someone who is not an animal rights activist and knows something about sheep. SchmuckyTheCat 15:12, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] my additions

I added to this from the top of my head as it didn't already have any referenced material.

Really this article could probably be a redirect to sheep shearing as on a commercial basis it is practically the same thing - it is done by the same teams of people. The award for shearers in Australia has a lot of room for working out on a shed-by shed basis how much is being done - just the rump, the face, the pizzle, or the whole belly may be done each adds a cost to the per head rate for the shearer's pay. I don't know that an industrial award is the best reference for this article though.Garrie 23:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] March 2007 edits

I've just made a major edit to the article. (I was only going to make one or two small changes ... oh well.) I grew up on the farm I now live on, which ran merinos at the time, and I've crutched a few sheep myself (mostly treating flystrike). I've also rouseabouted during the crutching of many thousands of sheep.

OTOH, my experience is limited to one part of Australia.

I made lots of changes, mostly moving text around but also adding some. Here's a summary:

1. Used {{otheruses4}} for "'crutching' as in traveling on crutches"
2. Expanded the lede to cover all types of crutching.
3. Instead of saying flystrike-prevention is the main reason for crutching, mention animal comfort and fleece quality as well, without saying which is more important.
4. Renamed "Usage" section to "Motivation" and expanded it.
5. Merged "Tools" into "Procedure", reorganised "Procedure".
6. Renamed "Compared to mulesing" to "Related procedures", moved it to the end, mentioned docking of tails.
7. Went with the U.S. spelling of feces, instead of faeces, for no better reason than brevity.

Here's a passage I took out:

Crutching can be used to improve the overall quality of fleece wool. For the highest quality wool, sheep are sometimes crutched immediately prior to shearing. This removes the most stained wool, preventing it from being included with the main fleece when it is sold.

This seems wrong to me. Shearing sheds have wool-classers and rouseabouts to pull low-quality wool off the fleece. Maybe it's the superfine wool growers who do this? (Their sheep live in sheds, and their cost-benefit trade-offs are quite different.)

My thanks to earlier editors for lots of good writing in this article. I hope they'll come back and improve my work. Cheers, CWC(talk) 17:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC)