Guest Mark - Shearing suppliers still sell Hand shears & the Federal Award for shearers mentions hand shearing (7.5% more than machine shearing!) Rates in the Pastoral Award as of December 2012

I don't know how widely they are used - some of them are for specialised operations. Dagging shears are used to remove dags = sheep shit - from fleece. I doubt they would be used to shear sheep in very large sheds. They would be more useful to shear a sheep or 2 in very small operations that don't justify the installation of expensive machinery.

History of shearing in Australia

sandra