Probable Sources of Errors in the Process of Sheep Wool Colour Photo-metric Determination

The livestock industry is characterized by a wide range of production - from industrial complexes to farms and private households. Unfortunately, the market for products of all types of animals is characterized by an imbalance of supply and demand and uneven domestic consumption. There is a decline in production and livestock numbers. Thus, the main problem of the sheep industry in Ukraine is a decrease in its commercial attractiveness on the one hand and its transformation over the past 20 years into small-scale production - more than 70% of the livestock is kept by farms and private households that are unable to meet the market's needs for quality raw materials - wool, due to limited financial capacity to comply with the requirements for the formation of a herd with appropriate parameters for wool. In addition, there is no infrastructure of procurement and processing enterprises and organizations in the regions that would effectively work with sheep products, which makes it impossible to form the batches of products necessary for the modern market for sale both domestically and abroad, and this also requires certification. One of the ways to solve the identified problem may be to introduce sorting by wool colour directly at the stage of shearing, which will increase the purchase price already when forming a batch of raw materials by colour. The aim of the study is to determine possible errors in determining the colour of wool when forming separate groups of animals before shearing. Thus, the proposed method and technical implementation makes it possible to sort a flock of sheep by colour directly in the production environment - on the farm, and then to carry out the entire shearing process in separate groups of animals and not to mix the wool of separate batches during accumulation and storage. The development of appropriate measuring and technological equipment, taking into account the established errors, will increase financial revenues for farms and farmers, which will contribute to the development of regional infrastructure for the procurement and processing of sheep products and the formation (creation) of large batches of products for sale abroad.