woolly

[asakiyume]

Twitter was tempting me yesterday with a story about an Australian sheep, lost in the wild for a long time, that was encumbered by its huge fleece. It really looked like a **person** in very capacious outerwear. So I drew that:



Really, though, domesticated sheep are no longer like wild sheep--they need to be shorn periodically--and this poor guy was underweight from not being able to eat much because all the fleece around his face interfered with his eating.

Now he's been shorn, and he must feel positively weightless. (Picture, as the stamp indicates, is yoinked from Reuters. The picture I screencapped above was from CNN, I believe).



Here's a Huffpost story on it, or you can just Google "wild Australian sheep" and stories will turn up.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I saw the person in the sheep too! I'm glad you drew her!

Oh my God also thank you for reminding me not to argue with angry children online who say shearing harms sheep. (and that beekeeping is cruel and murderous to bees.)

[cmcmck]

I assume none of these buffoons live in sheep country as we do?

[minoanmiss]

I don't know, but I would bet $5 on it. They sound entirely ignorant of both biology and animal husbandry in their evangelical rants.

[asakiyume]

yyyyeah, some people's desired perfect state for the world is pretty childish, not to mention not possible; what can you do.

[evelyn_b]

Poor little guy! I hope he's feeling free and breezy now. <3

[asakiyume]

I bet he is!

[cmcmck]

You begin to understand the advantage of short wool breeds like the semi wild North Ronaldsay.



Our local Shropshire longwool could have similar problems which is probably why it's now a rare breed.

[asakiyume]

Absolutely!

[sartorias]

That poor critter has to be feeling good!

[asakiyume]

Apparently the fleece weighed something like 70 pounds. Imagine getting THAT off your back!

[rustica]

I'm always fascinated by accounts of hermit sheep!

Apparently, some NZ sheepfarmers are starting to move towards breeds which shed their wool and don't need shearing, because they think it will be less work. I'm not sure what their full strategy is, though - wandering across the fields picking up clumps doesn't sound like less work to me, but what do I know, lol?

[wayfaringwordhack]

I actually doubt they will gather the wool. There is a market for pure wool but, sadly, it is costly to manufacture (the magazine Taproot had a great article on all the costs related to obtaining a skein of wool) and so most people do not want/cannot pay for it. I live next door to a sheep farmer here in France who said that it is only recently that a coop has been set up to take another stab at collecting and processing the wool, and so he takes his wool there now. Before that, he just dumped it and let it rot.

[rustica]

Huh, so the wool-shedders would just be for meat? That makes a lot of sense, thank you.

[asakiyume]

I know about the costs of pure wool from the consumer end, as someone who likes how warm and light pure wool is.

It seems like it's turning out that the means we have of making things less costly (e.g., creating artificial fibers) have serious costs of their own, though. Almost as if there is an absolute cost to things. I don't know that I believe that's actually the case, but sometimes it seems a little as if it is. But maybe it's just our next collective human challenge....

[asakiyume]

"Hermit sheep"--I like this name. The sheep in the photo really does look like a hermit and really was wandering around solo like one.

Until reading wayfaringwordhack's comment, I had forgotten that there were other reasons to raise sheep besides their fleeces.... this in spite of having known people who raised lambs for market!

[wayfaringwordhack]

The Ben Gunn of the sheep world!

Love your drawing. :D

[amaebi]

I love your drawing.