[GZG] [OT] Re: Sheep

Sheep are weird and have creepy looking eyes. They get stupider as they get
older as well, lambs can be quite quick but there are few things as stupid as
an old ewe. They will get stuck in a hedge and then just before you reach them
to free them they will pull themselves free and run away – otherwise they
would stand there until they die. Of course sometimes they will die on you for
no apparent reason. Another favourite trick is getting stuck on their back so
you have to roll them upright again.

For the last coupe of years our lawnmower has been a couple of tups, rams,
which are away at the moment, away doing their duty with the ewes. My uncle
lured them onto the trailer full of ewes with a bucket of meal – the two
great lures, food and sex. The tups are more sheepy than the ewes, they stink
very strongly (of sheep) and mostly just eat and sleep, except as this time of
year when they do the four letter thing as well; for this purpose they have
enormous testicles (very obvious when they are standing facing away from you,
you do not need to look too closely at them). They are not entirely stupid –
they know about windfall apples and come looking for them.

They do get some odd diseases and maggots can do horrible things to them. Very
often their feet need trimmed (my uncle would not make a good chiropodist)
which seems to involve a weird mix of tools involving rusty knives and old
pruning shears them spraying any wounds with a weirdly coloured antibacterial
aerosol – unless it is a stray can of paint!

Sheep dip is worth a mention as well. It was derived from German research into
nerve gas and has done horrible things to farmers over the years – a group
notorious for such games as how many people (and a dog) can you get onto a
quod bike and I recall two adults, four children (and a dog) fitting onto a
small tractor ( I was frequently one of the four children).

A hand reared lamb is cute but when it gets bigger it can be a problem, it is
not afraid of people and a make can be very aggressive – and big enough to do
some serious injury.

Some people like them, my uncle could spend all day working with them but
others do not, his son hates the things despite having inherited his father's
charm for animals (and inability to train dogs).

Apparently they do have quite good eyesight (to spot predators) and they seem
to exist in an almost permanent state of fear.

The best place for them is on your plate.

> Michael R. Blair wrote:
GZG XI must be coming up soon with all the talk of sheep.

> Sheep are weird and have creepy looking eyes. They get

Your discussion of sheep reminds me of my limited experiences with goats. Now
there's an animal with spooky eyes.

I had a friend in South Carolina with 22 goats and 4 cows on a creekfront
property where he was building a house. The theory being that

between the two animals they would keep the undergrowth down. You still had to
bush hog the land with a John Deere Tractor periodically.

Once there was a flood at the property. When they arrived to check on the
animals the cows were fine, and the goats were all crowded on top of

the little feed shed. Except for a baby goat trapped under the dock at the
little dockhouse on the creek. Between him and his wife it took a half hour to
pull this baby goat out from under the dock, all the time the water was
rising. To get it out they had to pull the goat out of the

mud under the dock and into the rising creek. The goat was pretty sure that
pulling it *into* the water would not make it safer, and it did not

want to go.