The clicking of shears is to give way to the silent plunge of a syringe. Some of Ireland's four million sheep may soon be sheared by a new Australian injection system, rather than the traditional back-breaking method of clipping the wool from the ewes.
Yesterday, Irish sheep farmers expressed delight at the system. It involves injecting the sheep with a special protein which triggers the animal to shed its fleece.
The sheep is fitted with a specially designed net to contain the wool, which is collected a month after the injection.
The development will be launched commercially in Australia later this month by a company called Bioclip.
The injection has been successfully tested on a quarter of a million Australian sheep. It will cost farmers there $3.70 a sheep, around the same price to have the animal sheared.
The company has focused on a target market of 80 million of the country's 110 million-strong sheep flock, which generates 520 million kilograms of wool annually. It also claimed the new system will not put the country's 6,000 sheep shearers out of work because they will still be needed to collect wool from the nets and remove unwanted material.
Australian farmers who put the new method on trial said it worked very well in controlled environments but not too well on pasture land. This is because the net used to collect the wool tended to get caught in sticks and bushes causing difficulties for the sheep and damage to the nets.
Mr Laurence Fallon, chairman of the Irish Farmers' Association's national sheep committee, said he was delighted with the development as shearing was a major problem for Irish farmers.
"The value of the wool from Irish sheep is equal to the cost of having the sheep shorn. It costs about €1.80 for each sheep and it is difficult to get people to do the work," he said.
"I am sorry to hear that it is not so successful when used on pasture in Australia because most Irish sheep farmers operate in those kind of conditions. However, there are also many controlled units and there could very well be a market for the product there."
Another sheep producer from Co Wexford, Mr Michael Murphy, said he would be very willing to try the new system. "I presume there could be different nets devised for different conditions but I could see the system working very well in some upland areas. I'd like to try it."
A west of Ireland producer who did not want to be named said his biggest fear was that some farmers who are not interested in collecting the fleece because of poor wool prices might administer the injection and leave off the fleece net.
"There could be a right mess then with every hedge and ditch in the country covered with wool. I think that there should be more thought put into this one," he said.