INGENIOUS SHEEPWASHING INVENTION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 369, 1 July 1874, Page 5

INGENIOUS SHEEPWASHING INVENTION.

Letters patent, says the " Age," have been granted to Messrs. John Mackenzie and D. H. Dow, sheep farmers in the Western district, for an ingenious invention, by which a difficulty has been overcome that has long been experienced in connection with washing sheep by the hot water soak and cold water spout process. The difficulty hitherto has been to get the sheep from the hot water and through the spouts sufficiently regularly and rapidly to prevent a chill setting in, by which the wool is rendered dry and brittle after washing, instead of smooth and silky. The former state of the wool is caused by the chill the sheep receiver preventing what is known as the iising of the yolk. By the method hitherto in use the sheep have been dragged by men from the soak to the spouts with much labor, while neither sufficient rapidity nor regularity has been obtained, to prevent the chilling of the sheep, and the attendant effects alluded to. From an inspection of Messrs. M'Kenzie and Dow's invention it is seen that the sheep, as they emerge from the hot- water soak, enter a gangway wide enough to admit the animals in single file, and set at an incline, up which the animals follow each other, and enter a circular pen constructed to hold two sheep, divided from each other in two compartments. The pen stands above the 6pout-trough, and works on a pivot, which is revolved by one man at a capstan. The first sheep in the gangway having entered the pen, a half revolution by the man at the capstan shifts it round to the further side of the pen, and secures it by a self-acting gate, through wich it is observed by the succeeding sheep, which is thus decoyed to step into the other compartment, the next half revolution sets in motion an ingenions apparatus by which the bottom of the pen containing No. 1 drop 9, letting the sheep fall down a shoot to the man at the spouts, and at the same time brings No. 2 round to the position just vacated by No. 1 ; No. 2 in its turn acting as a decoy to No. 3, which, when No. 2 disappears th rough the trap, acts as a decoy to No. 4, and so on, one sheep following the other and dropping through the trap as fast as the capstan revolves. The self-acting arrangements by which the sheep are secured upon entering the pen, and by which the two semicircular traps in the bottom alternately drop and regain their level position, are very ingenious. There is no pulling and hauling about the aliffpp, which follow each, other up the gangway and down the trap with unbroken regularity, and the rapidity of the process is such that in the trial under notice not more than an average of a minute per sheep was taken up from their entrance on the gangway to their final passing out to the field from under the spouts. The decoy principle in the above is the same that is taken advantage of in the simple arrangement for drafting sheep by a swing gate, of which Mr. Dow was also the inventor and introducer into the colony in 1848,