MULESING

Shear it or shoot it But don’t dare Mules it.

Spend a day with a busy farmer and see what an enjoyable job it is to mules a large mob of sheep. What sane, practical man would go to such effort and expense if it wasn’t necessary really necessary?

Towards the end of the Great Depression after a decade of widespread unemployment and poverty, there was a call to have the Australian flag restyled. The Southern Cross, under which many a swagman had stared at, while sleeping out, during those dry cloudless nights, was to be replaced with the rabbit and the blowfly. The rabbit for feeding the many families kept alive with no breadwinner and the blowfly that went to work after storms had drenched the woolly mobs, laying the eggs that became the maggots that urgently needed crutching and dipping putting ready cash into the bagman’s pocket. In those dark days maggots saved many a homeless Swaggie from starvation. The War found everyone work and luckily our flag remained untouched to be carry north by tough young men who had been raised and grown strong chewing underground mutton.

As valuable as the maggot was to the casual swaggie it is no laughing matter to the sheep. Summer storms cause areas to flood and many sheep get bogged and only with great effort could they can free themselves. If they have large areas of fly strike with maggots eating their skin they were frequently too weak to free themselves. Often its days before the boggy areas are dry enough before anyone can find and free them. Crows like to pick out their eyes while they are bogged so more often than not they are found blind and so weak they have to be shot.

A concerned grazier with years of experience seeing his sheep suffer during a hot wet season which occurs at least once in the life of a sheep decided to experiment at the seat of the problem and came up with mulsing. Although it was a lot of extra work it was worth the effort just to prevent his flock suffering a long, slow, painful death.

The young celebrities of our time who take it upon them selves to boycott woollen garments because of mulesing have little experience of animal welfare. They happily attend race meetings were all the beautiful thorough breeds have been branded with red hot branding irons as are all the cattle we eat. If sheep as animals weren’t fashioned to live outdoors at all hours in all weathers, suffering winter blizzards, summer storms with all their fierce thunder and lightning, being hounded by dingos and birds of prey, God would have given them lounge rooms like he has arranged for the domestic cat. Farmers know profit and rewards flow from happy and healthy animals.

We are all strong supporters of animal welfare and get much pleasure from love and devotion to our pets. There are few welcomes so freely given as a wagging tail. City dwellers store much of their humanity in pampered pets and increasingly find needy urban dropouts an untidy nuisance. On a cold winter’s morning they will show no concern or interest when hurrying passed a homeless deadbeat who has likely spent the night in the cold doorway in which he is sitting. There is no time to waste when one is rushing to the beach to wade in up to their waist in freezing water to massage and cuddle a whale who has inexplicably tried to commit suicide by beaching itself.

In my youth my father had a friend who was on the Milk Board that controlled the dairy industry. He was a political appointment and confessed he lacked the knowledge of how to turn a profit from the udder. He told me his one principal was, when called upon to make a decision he never put the cow before the man.

After sitting in an office chair for ten years I was asked to come out of retirement and shear a mob of sixty big wethers at the Sheep & Wool School to show the foreign students something of shed conditions. The shearing stand & pen was set up in a large brick city building. No windows, no breeze, in the middle of February during a heat wave. With city habits like a couple of beers at the local I’d gone soft. After five sheep my Dungas and Jackie Howe were soaked and the sweat was dropping off my brow like a new water bag. No barber would vote me dry for a fortnight. I was the only one to do the job so I had to knuckle down to finish the truckload. Then suddenly the place was full of school kids. Some bright fool with nothing better to do had decided that it was a waste to have me being watched by a few Pakistani students. So, something like a dozen school buses were bringing kids from selected schools around Sydney to enjoy the thrills of bush work. The youngsters would arrive, one bus at a time and the kids would crowd around and watch till I’d shorn two or three, then ushered out to be replaced by the next batch. With the end in sight and the last of the kids were as fresh as I was busted and I must have looked like death warmed up I asked a bright young girl standing close by. “What do you think of the shearing?” says I. “The poor sheep”. says she. “That’s funny, my daughter came with her school a couple of busses ago and was standing just where you’re standing now, and do you know what she said?”   No?   Poor daddy.