As part of helping the province’s sheep owners benefit from commercial wool production, the Eastern Cape Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform is injecting millions into the construction of sheep shearing sheds throughout
the province. During the 2017/18 financial year the Department constructed 17 shearing sheds for 7 000 communal farmers who generated R130 million income annually from wool sales.

 

The province produced 14.18 million kg of which 10.6 million kg is produced by commercial farmers and only 3.58 million kg comes from 40 000 communal farmers processed at the 1 224 shearing sheds across the province.

 

Berthania’s Ms Malesang Setlobong, who owns 63 sheep and has been producing wool for 22 years, is one of the farmers benefiting from the new sheep-shearing shed constructed by the department in Lundini.

 

“We love this shearing shed. It will help us to produce and sell better quality wool to BKB. Because we have equipment like scale, wool presser, sorting, scissors in the shed we are able get good income from the wool we produce. We are confident that from now on we will get good money for our wool,” said Setlobong.

 

Mohale Nkentu, the chairperson the shearing shed said the new shearing shed is going to improve their wool production.
“The old shearing shed we used was very bad and of low standard. Last year we had a bad experience when it was hit by snow. We had to renovate it so that we could shear and process our wool. We are thankful to the government because we have been requesting this facility. It was constructed last year in November. This will improve our wool production because in the old small structure our wool was mixed and not processed properly but now all that is in the past,” said Nkentu.

 

Nkentu, a retired Portnet Supervisor who owns 35 sheep, is one of the farmers who used to shear their sheep and store wool on a shearing shed they built using corrugated iron or zinc.

 

The department constructed the facility with a sheep dipping tank, wool pressing table, sorting equipment, pressing machines, shearing scissors, fenced the facility giving farmers a shot in the arm for their business.

 

Since 2014 the Department administered 30.5 million treatments to control sheep scab. During the 2018/19, the department is investing R10.8 million to administer 7.7 million treatments to treat sheep scab to improve the wool clip and is also facilitating cooperation between wool growers and industry commodity organisations.