Fat-tailed sheep are a type of domestic sheep mainly found in arid areas and known for accumulating fat, mainly in the rear part of their bodies, which not only gives them a unique look but also helps them stay cool in extreme heat.

Native to the Middle East and North Africa, fat-tailed sheep have been around for thousands of years, but some people are still oblivious to their existence, mainly because of their geographical distribution. In the 5th century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote about fat-tailed sheep and how shepherds made small wheeled carts to keep their animals’ droopy tails from touching the ground. Although there are several fat-tailed sheep breeds, most of them have broad fat-tails where large amounts of fat are accumulated in buttock-like deposits in the hind parts of a sheep, on both sides. Some of them end up looking like they had a Brazilian butt lift, which makes them really popular with breeders.

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A herd of sheep in China has been walking in a circle for almost two weeks now, and no one seems to really know why.

The bizarre behavior was captured on surveillance video at a sheep farm in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. In a video released on Wednesday by Chinese state-run news outlet People’s Daily, dozens of shep can be seen walking clockwise in a large circle, as other animals stare from outside the circle or at times stand motionless in the middle of it. Although it has been reported that the sheep appear to be perfectly healthy, it’s unclear if the animals ever stop to eat and drink, and if others take their place in the circle when that happens.

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The Ladoum sheep, known as the “king of sheep” in Senegal, is considered a mark of prestige and a status symbol in the African country, with prices for top specimens exceeding $85,000.

A hybrid of the Mauritanian ‘Touabire’ breed and the Malian ‘Bali-bali’, the Ladoum was first bred outside Senegal’s capital of Dakar in the early 1970s. For such a young breed, the Ladoum is incredibly popular in the West-African nation, with well-off families and breeders spending small fortunes on a specimen, and those who can’t afford one dreaming of one day having enough money to buy it. To understand just how revered the Ladoum is, in a country where about 40 percent of the population lives on $1.90 per day, some people spend tens of thousands of dollars on a single sheep.

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Georgian media recently released disturbing footage of over 500 sheep killed by a single lightning strike while grazing on a mountain pasture in Ninotsminda, southern Georgia.

According to news reports, on August 9th, Nikolay Levanov, a sheep owner from the village of Tambovka, received a distressing phone call from his sheepherder telling him that over a hundred of his sheep had been killed in a thunderstorm. What Levanov didn’t know was that along with his own flock, nearly 400 other sheep had been killed by the same lightning strike. Luckily, the sheepherder himself had only been knocked unconscious by the lightning and eventually recovered.

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Did you know there was a way to simply pull off the wool of sheep as you would a sweater, thus making classic shearing obsolete? It’s actually been around for decades, but for some reason, it never caught on.

When BioClip was first introduced in the early 1990s, it was supposed to completely replace sheep shearing in a matter of years. To be honest, it was a truly revolutionary product that relied on an effective biological agent to harvest sheep wool in a totally different way. A singly injection of BioClip caused a temporary break in the wool
follicle fiber synthesis process, essentially detaching the wool coat from the animal, and allowing owners to remove it as they would a piece of clothing. Videos of the process have been doing the rounds online for years, and they just never get old.

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Sheep need to be shared annually, otherwise their wool continues to grow to the point where it’s hard to tell they are still ship. That’s what happened to this poor ship in Australia, whose wool hadn’t been sheared in 5 years.

Photos of a “wild” sheep found in a forest in Australia went viral this week, because of the unusual coat the animal sported. Named Baarack by his rescuers at Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary near Lancefield, Victoria, the ovine is believed to have once been owned by a farm, but his ear tags were ripped out by the thick layer of matted wool on its face. At the time of his rescue, Baarack looked almost nothing like a sheep, his slender frame hidden under a mass of wool and dirt that weighed a whopping 35 kilograms.

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Prickles, a bare-faced merino sheep that ran away from a Tasmanian farm during the 2013 bush-fires, recently returned home, probably after deciding that it was finally time for a sheer.

According to farmer Alice Gray, Prickles was only a lamb when she ran away, seven years ago. The bush fires that ravaged the area back then destroyed a large chunk of her family’s massive property, and the young sheep got stuck in a 200-acre bush block at the back, unable to return after they rebuilt about 50km of fencing. They had spotted her a few times, and even recorded footage of her with surveillance cameras installed to monitor deer activity, so they knew she was alive, but they didn’t expect her to ever return on the farm. They were wrong.

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Filmmakers usually strive to make their productions as entertaining and engaging as possible, but the people behind “Baa Baa Land”, an epic 8-hour movie scheduled for release this September, set out to do just the opposite. With no dialogue, no plot and no human actors, just lots and lots of sheep, the so-called “world’s dullest movie” was designed to put viewers to sleep.

Produced by Calm, a company that produces mindfulness meditation products, Baa Baa Land is being advertised as “the ultimate insomnia cure” and “better than a sleeping pill”. It was filmed in Essex, England, and consists of slow motion shots of sheep in a field. Basically, nothing happens for eight hours, but that was the whole the whole point. Producer Peter Freedman, said that he believed it could be the dullest film ever made, adding: “We hope that audiences will, too”.

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The following story actually happened!I wouldn’t have believed it myself if it hadn’t been reported by the German police, following a first-hand experience the likes of which you don’t hear about every day.

A man in Rostock, North-Eastern Germany, had to pay a fine and will likely face a tax evasion lawsuit after he claimed that his Spanish Water Dog was actually a sheep, to avoid paying a mandatory tax. In Germany, dog owners must pay a “dog tax” – ranging 24 to 100 euros ($25 to $107) – and equip their pets with a special tag confirming that they paid the license. This does not apply to pet sheep (remember that, it’s important).

Last Wednesday, the man in question was spotted walking his dog in the Rostock harbor area, by a harbor security officer. Paying your taxes is apparently a big deal in Germany, because after noticing that the animal did not have the tag confirming that the dog tax had been paid, he confronted the owner about it. To his surprise, the man appeared shocked by the question and replied that his pet was not a dog, but a sheep. At first, the harbor employee thought it was a joke, but the man stuck to his original answer, so he had mo choice but to ask for the man’s ID and notify the police about him.

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A new adaptation of the Shakespeare classic King Lear features a bizarre cast – one human and nine sheep! 24-year-old Alasdair Saksena plays the human, a director who tries to persuade his cast of sheep to perform the tragedy. ‘King Lear with Sheep’ is, needless to say, every bit as absurd and hilarious as it sounds.

The play is the brainchild of actor Saksena, writer Missouri Williams, and producer Lucie Elven – all in their early 20s. The idea came about after Missouri, having worked on a tour of King Lear with a human cast, got sick of them. “There’s little references to sheep within the text that I think planted the idea in Missouri’s head,” Saksena said. “And so she decided to do King Lear with sheep and me. And I thought, you can’t really say no to that, can you?”

According to Saksena, the reason why this adaptation works is the thin line between tragedy and comedy. “Lear is so tragic and sheep are so untragic that it just sort of works – it comes together and is either desperately sad or desperately funny depending on what mood is catching at that particular point of time,” he explained. Read More »

When South Korean café owner Lee Kwang-ho decided to add a couple of sheep to his payroll, it was the best business move of his life. Since 2011, the fluffy employees at Nature Café have been attracting hordes of animal lovers and tourists. The shop serves all the café staples such as coffee, tea, and cake, but it all seems sort of extra-special when enjoyed in the company of a couple of fluffy sheep.

According to Lee, the café’s popularity has spiked recently because according to the lunar calendar 2015 is the Year of the Sheep. So lots of people want to see sheep, and the café is more convenient than seeking them out on a ranch. 21-year-old Lee Hyeon-ji agreed: “We were planning to go to a sheep ranch , but it’s too far and we didn’t have enough time to go there. Then we heard about this place where we can see sheep in Seoul and came to this sheep cafe.”

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A Tasmanian farmer-couple recently discovered what might just be the world’s woolliest sheep. They’ve named the super-fluffy creature ‘Shaun’, after popular cartoon character Shaun the Sheep from the British comedy series Wallace and Gromit.

As it turns out, Shaun has never had his coat cut, and it is at least half-a-meter thick now. In fact he appears to have been on the run ever since he escaped the shearers at his former farm on Tasmania’s east coast, at least 25 miles away. It is estimated that Shaun has been wandering across the island for the past six years!

Peter Hazel said that he and his wife Netty found Shaun wandering in scrubland on their property last Sunday. He was actually quite easy to catch, what with 20 kilograms of extra fleece weighing him down. His wool was just all over the place, even falling over his eyes and obstructing his vision.

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The Valais Blacknose sheep are some of the cutest animals I’ve ever seen. On first glance, they don’t even look real; many people have mistaken them for well-crafted felt projects. I wonder why they aren’t more popular on the internet. They do have a Facebook fan page with over 3,500 likes, butI think they ought to be more well-known.

The Blacknose sheep originate in the Valais region of Switzerland. They are a dual-purpose breed, raised for wool as well as meat. Their most notable features – a black face, black ears, black knees and legs. The rest of their coat is stringy, white and unbelievably fluffy; you’d just want to cuddle up with them. But they’re a pretty tough breed.

The Valais Blacknose are a Heritage breed. These domesticated animals are well suited to live in the extreme climatic conditions of the high mountains and are good at grazing on steep, rocky slopes. Each sheep weighs 80 to 100 kilos and produces about 4 kilos of wool a year. Their earliest mention dates back to 1400 A.D., but they were first recognized as a separate breed in 1962.

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This whole economic boom is just making China weirder with each passing day. Just last week I read they inaugurated their first gold-dispensing machine and now the country’s big bosses are paying millions of dollars for sheep.

Dolan sheep, to be exact, a rare breed which according to breeders has very special features that make it the latest collector’s item for China’s rich businessmen. They have a distinctive curved nose, long floppy ears and twin tails, but the thing that really makes them special is there are just around 1,000 of them left in the world. Dolan were originally bred from sheep in Kashgar, north-west China, to grow more quickly and yield more meat, the priced breed has since become purely ornamental. It reaches maturity and weighs over 200 lbs at just six months, but no one is thinking about sacrificing them for meat anymore.

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English farmer, James Metcalfe, has brought a whole new meaning to the term “branding”, after using his sheep to advertise a business venture.

After authorities denied his request to erect billboards near the A1 highway, because they could distract drivers, Metcalfe, from Dalton, North Yorkshier, decided to advertise his turf company using 20 of his sheep as living banners. Sheep marker comes in spray cans so it was quite easy to write Tyas Turf on the oblivious animals, and since the fields they graze on are right next to the A1, they’re just as good as any billboards.

Asked if he considers expanding into the advertising business, and renting his sheep as advertising space for other companies, Metcalfe, who partly owns Tyas Turf, said he doesn’t reckon his shepherd will go along with the idea, since he barely convinced him to let him  spray-paint the 20 sheep.

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