They say necessity is the mother of invention, and it was a worker shortage in the sheep and wool industry that forced Ben Banks and his brother-in-law Dominic Mohr to get creative.
The men built a three-stand pneumatic rotating crutching trailer so they could do the job for themselves when they could not get a shearing or crutching team to their family's Blackall property three years ago.
Traditionally, crutching is a labour-intensive task that requires pulling one sheep at a time onto a raised stand to remove wool from around its face, tail and rear legs to avoid flystrike.
But with the pneumatic system, two sheep are loaded into separate compartments and an air-powered rotating crate picks one sheep at a time, lifting it up to the person at the stand to crutch.
"We've got to move with the technology," Mr Mohr said.
"It's there and we've got to use it."
Crisis forces innovation
The shortage of workers that prompted the family to build the trailer continues to cripple the industry.
With more than 25,000 head of merino sheep, the family uses a local shearing team to help out when possible, but they are no longer reliant on the availability of teams.
"We don't have the worries a lot of other producers are having at the moment with getting shearers and crutchers," Mr Banks said.
"We've got the machine now, we've got the skills, we don't need to rely on anyone else if we don't have to."
While the workforce crisis has caused serious problems in the industry, Mr Banks said it was not the only challenge the sheep and wool industry had to overcome.
"As far as an industry goes, the sheep industry is quite a long way behind with its innovation," he said.
"We need to put a lot more time and money into innovation and get with the times."
Mr Banks said it had often been left up to producers to come up with solutions.
"We needed to create something that suited our operation, which is what we've done," he said.
"We need to make some changes and progress our industry.
"There's still a long way to go, but we all need to have a bit of a crack."
Learning process
After purchasing the air-operated cradles three years ago, Mr Banks and Mr Mohr set them up in their shearing shed to test them out and see how they could work for what they needed.
From the shed, they found a new home on the back of a trailer where they were able to tweak the layout and operation of the machines.
Now, after a few years of trial and error, they live permanently on the back of the trailer, which can be moved at any time.
"We've got it going pretty well," Mr Banks said.
"There's still a few little things we want to change ... it's a process, and it's getting easier."
Now crutching is a family affair, with Ben, his wife Oona, sister Megan and brother-in-law Dominic all able to get on the trailer and get the job done.
And it is much easier on the body than traditional methods like crutching over the board or in an older style trailer.
"You definitely don't feel like you've played a footy match at the end of every day," Mr Mohr said.
