Inhumane bullshit!
A human can shear a sheep 10 times faster and without the trauma to the sheep that this would cause!

I expect more than a few sheep will die of heart attacks during this process.
Is this what they would call "natural selection?" Only the non-panicked sheep survive to procreate.

^What if the technology caught up and the machine would do the job 10 times faster than man? Not much time for sheep to even be traumatized.

What will your opinions be then?

ALL YOUR BAHHH ARE BELONG TO US.

The deluxe model makes you lamb chops.

Just got a mental image of all the queued-up sheep waiting to get shorn... Lined up on rails like the combine prisoners in HL2.

And when will my ChickieNobs get here?

Absolutely terrifying.

I am willing to bet when this shit goes wrong it is quite the *horrorshow

Actually, yes. If the sheep are allowed to breed as they will, then this will still be natural selection. And by natural selection, the sheep will build up a genetic resistance to the shock of the robo-shearing over time.
>> ^Sagemind:
Is this what they would call "natural selection?" Only the non-panicked sheep survive to procreate.

This EXTREMELY slow compared to a skilled human shearer. I doubt there are many skilled human shearers around anymore, however. I wonder if it requires humans to strap the sheep into that rack?

Why would anyone create 'robot sheep'? For steel wool?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

^No, to keep up appearances with the neighbors. Robot sheep are rated very highly in Sydney's Animal & fowl catalog.

Relax guy, it's just a haircut no?

There are plenty of skilled shearers around the world, while the UK has a shortage due to Visa issues Aus and NZ have plenty. As for Sageminds comment on how he could sheer a sheep faster i would like to see that, and the sheep would not have a heart attack.
I dont think this machine would ever replace a human due to the fact it would take longer to strap it down then to shear the sheep. The machine worked quite well though apart from the un-natural position the sheep was in it was shorn very cleany, not many cuts and only a few tuffs of wool left

It's gotta be faster to do it by hand instead of all this prep-work + robot

That is by far, one of the most fucked up things I've seen in a very long time.

Sorry for "Spazzing" out, perhaps an over reaction to how people just think everything has to be mechanized. There is just something lost when we give ourselves over to machines. (other than taking the humanity out of it.) My brain does however react strongly to this.

I'm not sure how this is much different to the machines that milk the cows, or the system used to process eggs from chickens in mass factory/farms but a machine that manipulates a living creature like that somehow just seems wrong....

And No, I can't sheer a sheep, nor have I tried, nor have I ever needed to. I have seen it done a thousand times. There is an art to it, and in the end, I suppose it can be hard work if you have 1000s of sheep to do but... - "them poor sheep."

Anyone out there that "sheers sheep for a living"..., Give us "your" comments...

I just watched 'Fire in the Sky' (1993) last night... this looks like a terrible procedure to endure.

This is probably not in NZ. There, they have a very special, close relationship with their sheep which would likely call for a lot more hands on approach than we see here.

"A human can shear a sheep 10 times faster."

I predict a machine will never be able to out-calculate a human being! Oh, wait, am I too late? Does technology keep advancing, not simply stopping after I personally view a tech demo?

so you take a regular CNC machine, replace a chunk of metal w/ a sheep, replace a drillbit w/ a cutter and load up file 'sheep_trim_v3.txt'
it'll follow a pre-programmed contour and motions.
if your sheep is a bit fatter, tough luck

Hasn't anyone here seen "A Close Shave" -- the Aardman masterpiece featuring a large-scale motorbike rescue of sheep from just such a robot shearer???
I can find no clips but here's a trailer:
http://youtu.be/MnTr7k_q9a0