Mulesing

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my sister is doing a year 7 study on it, and a friend has picked it for her optional research project... but what do you think about the PETA smear on Australian wool exports because of it..? so far two major US companies have cancelled their acceptance of aussie wool - Abercrombie and Finch and now Timberland...

[smiley_1001]

Yeah i just did an assignment report thing on it...i can see both sides i guess, but sheep can be in so much pain with flystrike, i guess its a good way of controlling it.

[emar]

well living on a property andf seeing flyskrike first hand ive gotta say that yes mulsing is bad but it only happens once in the sheeps life while unmulsed sheep can get attacked every year and ive never seen a sheep die from mulsing but seen countless die from flystrike. and peta try to make out its worse than what it is they've got a website where they say that we mulse the sheeps faces-ive never in my life seen this done. theyre just do gooders trying ti interfer in something they know nothing about and 60 minutes went along with them-its nothing but a tabliod current affairs program and absolutelt useless cause it only shows one side of the story than wont let the other side tell theres. the awi tried to get their story on 60 minutes after the peta one but they wouldnt show it!!!!

[mountainman]

PETA are radical morons who have no idea about the real world. If they had their way we would not be allowed to farm animals, keep pets, ride horses, go to zoos, eat meat, go hunting or fishing, use leather or fur etc. Basically they have about the same amount of brains as something you might find on the bottom of your shoe. Anyone dumb enough to beleive them has about the same brain power.
Its simple. If we don't mulse our sheep, they will die a slow painfull death from flystrike. Currently the AWI is working to find an alternative for mulesing, and I am quite pissed off that they have bowed to these radical fuckwits, but what are you going to do. The Australian public are like mindless sheep, and if the TV tells them mulesing is bad, they will believe it.
I recently read in 'The Land' a letter from Ingrid Newkirk (president of PETA) that she beleives sheep are smart enough to recognise other sheep and people from photographs. The argument was that we couldn't mulse such a smart animal. I have worked with sheep my whole life, and I can tell you, they are not smart. Maybe compapred to someone from PETA they are, but thats nothing to boast about.
In short, they are just idiots, ignore them and hopefully they will go away.

[Slatteryexpress]

Totally agree with whats being said, and a while back the breed of sheep called Dorpers were hailed as the best thing ever invented that you didnt have to mulse them and great for profits and all that. It was a total flop.

Ingrid Newkirk (president of PETA) is an absolute clown she wrote into the land the otherday and caused a big uproar. I dislike PETA with a passion, misleading people with misonformation (Bit like the Labor party).

[steer-rider]

You can't really say that someone is a moron just because they disagree with you, there is no doubt that mulesing is rather painful, and there are alternatives to it, such as one method where an injection is given to the sheep which causes a scab to form that prevents wool from growing on the injection site.
In addition, the producers need to be senisitve to the desires of the consumers, regardless of where those desires come from. With premiums of up to 10% on wool from unmulsed sheep, it is clearly advantageous to cease mulesing ASAP for individual farmers, both by using short term mehtods (such as the injection method ad crotching) and long term methods (genetics) in order to get ahead of other producers, as well as the AWI so that they aren't boycotted internationally.
The timetable set by the AWI to cease mulesing by 2010 is an attestment to the overarching need to meet consumer requirements, even if the farmer believes that the desires are based on chimeras.

[Stevo.]

get fucked pansy.

[steer-rider]

Tell me, have you castrated a calf, or if not, would you? I am hardly a pansy.

[mountainman]

There are no practically viable alternatives to mulesing at this time
1) The intradermal injection is prohibitively expensive and does not work effectively
2) The skin clips and similar a) will cause further infection as the flies are attracted to the smell of rotten flesh and, b), Those fucking morons at PETA will not accept it as a "cruelty free" method.
3) Genetic alternatives involve breeding the wrinkles out of sheep. This will take a long time and poorer quality wool will be produced as a result OR, genetic manipulation ie, inserting the chitinase gene in sheep. This gene is present in plants, and manipulating an animal's genes to involve those of a plant will surely raise a few ethical issues.
4) Other alternatives to mulesing include jetting, crutching and constant monitoring of stock. These are done anyway, but in un-mulesed sheep the mortality rates are higher regardless.

http://www.cababstractsplus.org/vete...tems&Year=2005

The table about a quarter of the way down supports this.

With a name like "Steer rider" surely you must be able to see that PETA stands against your whole way of living? If it was up to them you would not be riding steers or castrating calves (yep that makes you a big man by the way...), you would be watching the steers (exept they wouldn't be steers would they?) gambolling in the fields, playing with the other happy animals, the poor opressed sheep would run free, magically free of flystrike and shearing themselves, the battery hens would be flying free, perhaps riding of the back of a friendly fox who was in no fear of being shot, because he was just misunderstood.

The hard cold truth is that yes mulesing may hurt, but dying from flystrike would hurt a hell of a lot more. Unfortunately there is no "cruelty free" agricultural system, but we need to eat, if people don't want to eat then go ahead and stop doing it, just don't complain to me.

[Amon]

PETA is mostly a radical group who uses propaganda to get their points across
if you look at the website you will see why so many people believe them: they only tell half the story and only in parts where it suits
e.g in one quiz for children they had it says that sheep do not need to be shorn because they grow enough wool to keep cool/warm all year around
and then on another section they talked about some sheep dying because of having to much wool and over heating (the video displayed by Pink i think) a second example of this is that a study in ENGLAND showed fly strike occurred just as commonly in mulesed sheep as non mulesed i wonder how different this test would be if done actually in AUSTRALIA as its our wool their complaining about
and above their little topics they put things like : these are the facts about mulesing! what they hide is after in size 1 font that we want you to read

so you shouldn't really blame some people for believing them especially those in the city who have never even seen a sheep

also methods like crutching are not practical for farmers with large flocks of sheep as shearing every single sheep constantly would be a waste of time.
i would also like to point out that castrating calves is also shunned by PETA
all this being said i do believe that alternatives should be used so long as they are as effective e.g breeding resistance in wile trying to maintain quality of wool even a less painful way of prevention would be better and technically be allowed as it is not actually mulesing thus getting that 10% bonus also if you did something less ethical than mulesing you would get the non mulesed bonus too huh?

[mecrowley]

well said champ. ya dont eat ya dont shit ya die..
struck for a day mulesed for life..

[RaisethedusT]

The genetically enhanced plain bodied sheep are the way to go.
NORM SMITH: We have basically eliminated any hard wrinkle on our sheep and all of our sheep are now plain bodied. We haven't mulesed since 2005, and we haven't mulesed our wethers since I think about 2001.

Not only have they eliminated mulesing, they say: It's an easy care sheep so we're not having to spend as much time with them, as far as chasing flies or drenching them or whatever, and there's also we've got more lambs on the ground this year.

The sheep we're breeding not only have a higher density of wool fibres on their body but those fibres are twice as long as the conventional sheep, so we can afford to shear twice a year.

Could this be the future?

[boris]

Originally Posted by steer-rider

You can't really say that someone is a moron just because they disagree with you, there is no doubt that mulesing is rather painful, and there are alternatives to it, such as one method where an injection is given to the sheep which causes a scab to form that prevents wool from growing on the injection site.
In addition, the producers need to be senisitve to the desires of the consumers, regardless of where those desires come from. With premiums of up to 10% on wool from unmulsed sheep, it is clearly advantageous to cease mulesing ASAP for individual farmers, both by using short term mehtods (such as the injection method ad crotching) and long term methods (genetics) in order to get ahead of other producers, as well as the AWI so that they aren't boycotted internationally.
The timetable set by the AWI to cease mulesing by 2010 is an attestment to the overarching need to meet consumer requirements, even if the farmer believes that the desires are based on chimeras.

Get the hell out you nancy. Also there is currently no premium on unmulsed wool, infact a sale last week at my old company of unmulsed wool did not fare any better than wool from mulsed animals.

I grew up on a sheep farm and worked in the wool marketing industry for a year when I finished school..

PETA are a bunch of insane idiots who do not use fact to get their statements across. Instead they use smear campaigns based on emotion and factual inaccuracies.

It's disgraceful that Australian Wool can be so deeply affected because people don't have the balls to stand up against people like PETA!

[boris]

Originally Posted by RaisethedusT

The genetically enhanced plain bodied sheep are the way to go.
NORM SMITH: We have basically eliminated any hard wrinkle on our sheep and all of our sheep are now plain bodied. We haven't mulesed since 2005, and we haven't mulesed our wethers since I think about 2001.

Not only have they eliminated mulesing, they say: It's an easy care sheep so we're not having to spend as much time with them, as far as chasing flies or drenching them or whatever, and there's also we've got more lambs on the ground this year.

The sheep we're breeding not only have a higher density of wool fibres on their body but those fibres are twice as long as the conventional sheep, so we can afford to shear twice a year.

Could this be the future?

They're not genetically enhanced. They're bare breeched sheep, they've found some sheep do not grow much wool around areas normally affected by fly strike.

Also a lot of what you just posted is the normal bullshit propaganda by the SRS.

[RaisethedusT]

Originally Posted by boris

They're not genetically enhanced. They're bare breeched sheep, they've found some sheep do not grow much wool around areas normally affected by fly strike.

Also a lot of what you just posted is the normal bullshit propaganda by the SRS.

actually its information from a property near wellington. they produce wrinkle free merinos. no wrinkle=no moisture= no flystrike.
and i agree they aren't enhanced, i couldnt think of the word. its a genetic alternative. some of the info was also taken from transcripts of an ABC radio station where they talked to the property owners.