Saw this news article. Sheep escapes from a farm, lives on it’s own about 8 years. It accumulates 40 kilograms of wool, approximately the same as the animal’s body mass. While it survived all this time, it couldn’t have been good for the sheep’s performance to be so laden down with wool that it can’t run as fast, and all that wool must trap heat, lowering the sheep’s endurance.
I don’t see how wild, pre-human sheep could survive with that kind of encumbrance. Any info on this?
I am no expert, but i expect the wool always grew like that. What changed is that the sheep got lazy - no predators chasing them through bushes etc to rub it off.
I’m no expert either but why wouldn’t people have selected for sheep with the fastest growing wool. We’ve been into GMOs for at least 10,000 years. The only difference is that we (sort of) know just what we’re doing. Except for unfarmed fish, essentially nothing we eat isn’t a GMO. And mostly never tested for bad effects.
ETA: Simulpost w Hari Seldon
Different domestic sheep breeds grow wool at different rates. There are even domestic sheep breeds collectively called “hair sheep” which don’t grow wool at all and never need shearing.
For meat & dairy sheep, wool is considered at best a nuisance. In Olden Dayes even lousy wool had a big market. In modern times, lousy wool has a tiny market. Much of it ends up as compost, not as carpet or clothing.
For those sheep breeds raised for wool, more & higher quality wool is the goal for what’s now millennia of focused selective breeding. Those sheep definitely thrive better when sheared at appropriate intervals. And conversely, those breeds don’t give much good meat nor milk.
No different than we now have dairy cattle that produce so much milk even when they haven’t recently calved that absent milking by humans they develop infections and swelling & other bad stuff from their excessive milk production.
I’ve always wanted to post same OP, but about poodles. Seems like a lousy genetic life choice.
So, thanks OP.
No, not really.
Astonishing as it now seems, poodles were developed as a hunting breed. Their long, curly coat coat protects them as they go thru marshes & fields after game. But it accumulated dirt & twigs & stuff that the owner had to groom out. So the unusual poodle haircut was developed to cope with this – the head & tail tip are left alone, so they are easily visible as the dog moves thru the field, but the trimmed body is much easier to cleqn qt the end of the days hunting.
Some hair sheep more or less “shed” their wool (often by rubbing against the fence or gates) and look quite comical for a while. Their sides are clean and nice, appearing freshly shorn, while the tops of their backs look like Donald Trump’s head. And they make one hell of a mess of the yard/pasture. Looks like sea foam all over the place, but it doesn’t go away!
Anybody want some sheep?
If you’ve ever had a poodle, it’s pretty clear they were originally a hunting breed; they have ALL the hunting dog instincts in spades.
And standard poodles are pretty large dogs- of a size with most other waterfowl hunting dogs like Labrador and Golden Retrievers, although not quite so bulky; most people probably think about a size down for most things- what they probably think is a toy is a teacup, and what they think is a miniature is a toy, and what they think is a standard is actually a miniature (which are more or less beagle-sized).
I knew this about the poodle (not bragging, just saying); but the breeding-for-purpose argument doesn’t hold (like shaggy sheep or udderful cows) unless you say that this grooming is facilitated somehow by the hair itself, some sort of adaptation for special cutting for which incessant growth is either desired or a go-along genetically for it.
Waitaminute, sheep are made out of FOOD? :eek:
Pull the other one; I’ve had mutton AND lamb in my mouth before,* and I ain’t buyin’ it.
*not at the same time
I wasn’t claiming that about poodles. It’s a haircut, done by humans, not something special bred into poodle hair.
Many people don’t know that poodles are a hunting breed.
Depends drastically upon what the animal was fed. Simple grass fed is not exactly brilliant. Animals that feed on astringent plants are essentially pre-flavoured with herbs that make a big difference. Here in Oz saltbush is the main one. Even then liberal use of things like rosemary make a big difference. But treating lamb the same as beef is never going to end up well.
There does seem to be a fundamental question here.
Most hair on animals (including humans) seem to grow cyclically. Hair follicles are active for a period of time, and then stop, the hair falls out, the follicle remains dormant for some time, and then the cycle repeats. This generally leads to hair/fur of a generally constant length, with variations through the seasons if needed. Even human head hair tends to be limited in length this way, although the limit varies from person to person, and race to race.
So an animal where the hair follicle don’t go through this cycle, and just keep growing is something of anomaly. Breeding might have selected for best wool production, but farmers would still have been shearing each year, and so would not have deliberately selected for constant growth. However I guess an animal where every follicle was always active would yield a sheep with a denser fleece. So perhaps selection did yield an animal where follicles never cycle. Perhaps the same happened with poodles. Do poodles eventually become fur balls carrying their own weight in their coat?
You haven’t tried my slow-cooked lamb shanks with garlic and rosemary. Better than fillet steak in my (humble?) opinion.
A lot of lamb & mutton sold in the US since the '50s has been commodity garbage of indifferent quality and gamy variable flavor.
Modern artisanal lamb is awesome. As is most NZ lamb.
It doesn’t taste like beef. Then again, duck doesn’t taste like chicken.
Yes. Don’t have time to find the/a photo–have to take Buddy out for a walk–but I saw recently photo of an abandoned one looking exactly like that, weighed down with trash as well.
ETA: with garlic and rosemary and lamb, try rubbing over lightly some anchovy smush; I do it with shoulders and legs, in this case making lots of little slits/perforations and inserting the trio (all minced small) into each hole, which then close up.
Trust me on this. The taste just gets richer and oomphier. It’s an Abruzzo Italian way from way back.
I think you’ve missed the point. You first claimed the fleecy fur facilitated hunting, then you claimed the fur had to be trimmed to facilitate hunting. Which is it?
This reeks of “just so,” and I ain’t buyin’ it. The poodle (“pudelhund”) is a water dog, and its coat keeps it warm. The poodle cut is French circus BS, and dog show people cannot be trusted.
The dog that was the devil in Goethe’s Faust was a poodle.
Just so you know.
Duck?
I thought that was a lubricant. No reason to expect it to taste like chicken…
Hair and wool are similar but distinct fibres. Wool is a form of modified hair. Amongst many physical and chemical differences that are the cause of it’s different character, as a broad brush, hair fibres sheds periodically. Wool doesn’t.
Wild (non domestication or sheep have fleece which would have comprised a higher proportion of hair, which would have been shed. Post domestication selection for wool fibres over hair fibres would have produced animals that required regular shearing because there is no theoretical limit to how long a wool fibre can grow, assuming adequate nutrition.
Pre-domestication sheep would not have grown 40 kg fleeces because their fleece growth rates were much lower, they had more hair which would have been shed and they wouldn’t have lived 8+ years.
Yeah, well no actually.
The lamb that adorns the typical Australian dinner table doesn’t come from flocks grazing on the Old Man plains of the Riverina.
There might be the odd sheep who gets loose in the market gardeners thyme, mint and majoram patches and there may be the odd boutique butcher making the claim of saltbush fed lamb as a marketing angle but the sheep meat coming off the grazing properties is principally mutton, from older animals, certainly more flavoursome than lamb but you can’t tell if it’s been a good year for the Atriplex nummularia from the taste. Whatever condiments, sauces and marinades are applied totally overwhelm any vestial flavours.
Sheep don’t particularly like eating saltbush, so it’s main value is as a reserve fodder over the summer when the more palatable, productive and nutritious grasses aren’t growing.