I'd never heard of "Dag Crushing" before, so I stopped in to check this place out. It turns out that there is enough wool content in "dag" -- the Australian (and therefore New Zealand) term for the dung-coated wool on a sheep's hindquarters -- for an enterprising young man to make a business out of it. He collects bags of dag, dries it in the sun then runs it through a custom, purpose built machine of his own design which thrashes the "non-wool" matter out and mostly -- though not completely -- ventilates it out of the building. The clean wool which has been extracted is then bagged and sent off to market right along with all the other "normal" wool. It's a pretty nasty job and I didn't get the sense it pays particularly well, but it seems to be a busy little business... and something else you probably wouldn't hear much about except from
The Voyage of Macgellan!
2 comments:
I used to do it for a living for my first job in NZ.
Used to be able to produce 5 bales of wool a day and it was all manaul labour.even pressing the wool bales was done by tramping it d down with your feet.hard work i tell ya.cant say I miss it either.
I used to do it as a job in NZ north Canterbury pays well I used smaller crush every six hours producing two 100kg bales of wool an heaps bags of sheep manure for gardens ,the wool is mainly used for the making of heavy socks.
Post a Comment