In the five years that he has lived at Rancho Mucho Caca, John Deere, my weedeater, has never had a haircut. He is a Barbados sheep, which is a breed of "hair" sheep as opposed to the "wool" sheep most people are used to thinking of. (Most people who see him think he is a goat.) The hair grows out into clumps that sometimes fall off or get caught on the fence, but mostly it's just a thick ugly rug after awhile, with a side order of dreadlocks:
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| No, he's not wearing an old carpet. |
My boarder, Vanessa, took a class in sheep shearing and was eager to give John a trim, so this morning I caught him up and tied him in the hay shed while I laid out my various clippers, none of which were meant for sheep shearing. Vanessa arrived and the fun began!
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We got a lot with the clippers, with Vanessa clipping while I pulled the loose hair off. Later we just had Vanessa hold him still while I got some with the scissors. We didn't get it quite all off but quit at a point where all the mats were gone. He'll never win a "best groomed" award, but he'll be a lot happier now.
After the trim, John looked like a new sheep! Much younger and handsomer than before the haircut. I guess I will have to give him a haircut every summer from now on. He must have been miserable with all that hair on him. I didn't know how much was hair and how much was just fat sheep, but he's actually quite trim. The hair had almost doubled his width!
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We didn't quite get it ALL off, but doesn't he look cooler!
(Sorry for cutting off your head, Vanessa!) |
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| All this hair from ONE sheep! |
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| BEFORE |
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| AFTER |
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| Back in his pen now, the rodeo is over! |
He should be a much cooler sheep this summer.
And that's the latest from the Ranch.
