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Detailed travelogue on Australia and New Zealand

Detailed Travelogue on Australia and New Zealand

Larry
2006-05-27 03:23:16

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some juice and a chat, Graham took a sheep, and showed me how the
shearing is done. Taking an electric shaver, he sheared the entire sheep in
under a minute, then did another one, giving me a piece of its wool as a
souvenir. The sheared wool goes into a box, and is sent almost as-is to
someone else, who will clean it and get it ready for turning it into fabric.
The sheep protest a bit, but really don't put up that much of a fight during
the shearing, and once the shearing is done, they just wander back out onto
the paddock (field), not seeming to mind. If a sheep isn't sheared, its
wool can become so heavy after a while that the sheep might tip over on its
side and be unable to get up. I saw this firsthand. While driving around
the farm, we came across a sheep that had tipped over because of its full,
heavy coat of wool. It had been trying to get up, but was unable to do so,
no matter how hard it tried. If we hadn't come along and helped it up, it
would have eventually died there on its side.
Graham keeps track of his sheep by placing colored nametags on each and
every one of them. The color is a code, identifying not only the year the
sheep was born, but any other important information as well, such as health
problems, or if it's been a recent mother.
Sheep are dumb. There's no other way to say it. Cows are geniuses next
to sheep. Sheep do nothing but graze all day, looking up only if they hear
a noise -- and as they stand there with their idotic expressions going
"baaaaah", they have to be the stupidest-looking animals on the face of the
earth. Sheep also have a mob-mentality mindset. If a sheepdog can get a
few of the sheep to go through a gate, the rest of the herd will usually
follow blindly, becoming one giant moving blob of white.
Graham has four sheepdogs, and took two of them out with us while ...

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