At least some things in the world are still adorable. From RTÉ:
The Kelly's have four boys who are just one day shy of their fifth birthday.
Now they have been gifted an early birthday present of quad lambs.
Honestly the whole video is worth it just for the lambs running off at the end.
Quads on the double for Offaly farming family [Teresa Mannion / RTÉ]
Image: Public Domain via PxHere Read the rest
Ever wondered where tartan comes from? Now you know: the tartan sheep of Auchingarrich. Glenn Check:
A Scottish farmer at Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre fools tourists into believing that her flock produce tartan wool with the help of some harmless sheep marking spray. The visiting Americans were told that the animals were being raised on a diet of Irn Bru and shortbread"
More from The Scotsman:
Maxine Scott, 62, used her skills with a spray-can to brighten up ewes April and Daisy. She puts up a sign pretending the sheep turn that colour naturally and the wool then used to make tartan wool for kilts and blankets. Maxine said: “When we got the park, they always had tartan sheep. It was just for the tourists. “We just continued the tradition. The public do like it - Americans are really impressed by them.
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A southern Australia livestock sales agent saved a magical unicorn sheep from the slaughterhouse by trading its owner two cases of beer in exchange for the fantastic creature. (The unicorn, named Joey, apparently does have a stunted second horn but whatever.)
“We’ll break him in, take him to shows and pageants, and who knows where we can go, maybe Hollywood,” (Joey's new human companion Michael) Foster told 7News Adelaide.
“I’m sure the kids will get a big kick out of patting a real-life unicorn, we might even do unicorn rides.”
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“She protecc, she attack, but first she naap.” Read the rest
We've got a lot of animals up here in Alberta, Canada. Bears, wolves, coyotes, raccoons and elk? We rock that. Goats and sheep? Yep. To make sure that you know the difference between those latter two, Parks Canada has put together a helpful video.
Now you've got no mistake for ever thinking goats are sheep ever again. Read the rest
Sometimes I think I've reached the end of the internet, you know, that I've simply "seen it all." Then a video of a humans dressed as sheep -- hunchbacked and bleating, no less -- pops up and I know there's plenty in this world left to surprise me.
This absolutely splendid "human-sheep shepherding" was performed by Toronto's Les Moutons, which is a special troupe within the CORPUS dance project.
Its description is as follows:
Reality meets fantasy in this wordless live installation that recreates a bucolic country scene in a typical urban setting. Travel to a strange & hilarious universe as CORPUS takes you through a carefully studied, surrealistic overview of sheep behaviour. Meet Julie, Marie-louise, Bernadette and César, 3 healthy ewes and a young ram. Routine activities include: shearing, feeding, milking and many more... This truly innovative performance twists reality in surprising ways and takes audience interaction to new heights!
To take a closer look at this mutton madness AND to see an awesome "sheep shearing," watch this performance of Les Moutons:
(reddit) Read the rest
When the shepherd begins to rise to their feet, the ram, spooked by an approaching car, turns and puts them down again. [via]
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Sheep in the remote Faeroe islands, between Scotland and Norway, have been fitted with cameras to provide a vast corpus of sheepcam footage. At Sheepview, you may soon be able to explore the windblasted heaths and crags as if you were yourself an ambling, grass-munching ruminant—and help Google to catch up and generate street-view imagery that islanders need.
As the sheep walk and graze around the island, the pictures are sent back to Andreassen with GPS co-ordinates, which she then uploads to Google Street View.
“Here in the Faroe Islands we have to do things our way,” says Andreassen. “Knowing that we are so small and Google is so big, we felt this was the thing to do.”
So far the Sheep View team have taken panoramic images of five locations on the island. They have also produced 360 video so you can explore the island as if you are, quite literally, a sheep.
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Watch this Pekingese show not only this sheep but two other dogs who's boss.
In Australia, an animal humane society brought in a champion sheep-shearer to trim a badly overgrown sheep that was found wandering in the woods near the capital.
From the Guardian:
A bushwalker spotted the sheep near Mulligan Flats, just outside Canberra, and called the RSPCA, which mounted a rescue mission on Tuesday.
Tammy Ven Dange, the chief executive of the Australian RSPCA, said five staff members were needed for the job.
It appeared the sheep had become lost from its herd. Ven Dange said merino sheep were bred to grow wool and could suffer infections or flystrike if they were not regularly groomed.
Of the wool removed by that award-winning sheep shearer, the RSPCA rep said, ““It’s pretty disgusting. I don’t think anyone is going to want it.”
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Explore the many trivia, hidden object, shooting and driving games created around Google Maps, from Streetview Zombie Apocalypse to Google Sheep View.
A farmer, criticized for allowing sheep-shearers to swear at his animals, joked that the animals have never complained about salty language.
Ken Turner, of New South Wales in Australia, was reported to animal welfare group RSPCA after workers reported that the behavior distressed the herd, reports the Newcastle Herald. A complaint was lodged by PETA, to whom workers had sent undercover footage of abuse they say was physical as well as verbal, "including stomping and punching of the sheep."
"If foul language were the worst that sheep in Australian shearing sheds had to endure, then no complaint would have been filed," a spokeswoman told the newspaper.
But the case was dropped, leaving Turner to tour the press making light of the allegations: "they didn’t even look offended to me after they were shorn," he told a radio host last week.
The Australian Associated Press (widely syndicated to outlets such as The Telegraph and The Daily Mail) left the physical abuse details to the very end of its report. London's Metro tabloid completely removes them, describing the allegations exclusively as "bizarre" complaint about language. The Times wrote that the report had "provoked a debate about whether verbal abuse of animals constitutes an act of violence"—but also managed to avoid detailing the fact that violence was also alleged. The footage was deemed inadmissible in court, according to the AAP. Read the rest
A couple from County Durham, England, will do jail time after decapitating a sheep and terrifying local children with the severed head.
Robert Carr, 28, was sentenced to 20 months for the bizarre attack, described by authorities as "beyond comprehension". Miranda Clark, 39, will spend up to eight months in jail. Carr and Clark pleaded guilty to charges of animal cruelty, child cruelty, destroying property and owning an illegal knife.
“Their initial attack on a defenseless animal seems to have served no purpose beyond providing some sort of twisted entertainment for the pair," prosecutor Gerry Sydenham said. "Not content with killing and mutilating the rare sheep, they then went on to traumatise a group of local children with the animal's severed head, before discarding it as an afterthought in a neighbour's yard. Read the rest
