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Crutching is the removal of wool from around the tail and between the rear legs of a sheep. The practice is employed to lessen the risk of a sheep developing Myiasis (becoming fly-blown), which occurs when flies lay eggs in the in warm damp smelly wool and the fly larvae grow and eat into the warm moist skin. Crutching also improves quality of fleece wool, so timing is very important. For the highest quality wool, sheep are sometimes crutched immediately prior to shearing. However, mostly crutching is carried out at the start of the fly season (which depends on local climatic conditions) and may be needed at intervals of 6-8 weeks in high fly risk conditions. In addition, ewes are generally crutched prior to lambing if they are not recently offshears in order to provide the newborn lamb with a cleaner suckling area. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
Long and short hair wool at the South Central Family Farm Research Center in Boonesville, AR Wool is the fiber derived from the hair of domesticated animals, usually sheep. ...
Binomial name Ovis aries Linnaeus, 1758 A sheep is any of several woolly ruminant quadrupeds, but most commonly the Domestic Sheep (Ovis aries), which probably descends from the wild moufflon of south-central and south-west Asia. ...
The Mediterranean fruit fly, or medfly, Ceratitis capitata A fly (plural flies) is any species of insect of the order Diptera, some of which can land on food and transmit bacteria to humans. ...
Larvae are the plural of larva, juvenile form of animals with indirect development. ...
Shear is a form of structural failure. ...
Crutching is different to mulesing, although they are closely related in that mulesed sheep require much less crutching. It is the long wool hanging over which gets soiled from the urination of ewes, or from faeces which are mucky due to green feeding, rapid change of feed, or from diseases such as internal parasites. Mulesing is the removal of a strip of wool-bearing wrinkle skin from around the tail of a sheep. ...
A parasite is an organism that lives in or on the living tissue of a host organism at the expense of it. ...
Hand shears may be used, especially where an individual sheep is particularly dirty, or flystruck. Mostly, whole flocks are treated together. Often the shearing plant is used, and the crutchers sit the sheep between their legs and effectively shear just the required portion of the sheep, leaving the main fleece to continue growing. There are also many varieties of crutching cradles which allow the sheep to be crutched with less physical strain to the operator. Myiasis is an animal or human disease caused by parasitic dipterous fly larvae feeding on the hosts necrotic or living tissue. ...
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