Lambs To The Barber

Our babies take a step towards sheephood when their curls hit the woolshed floor.

- Michele Hewitson

The lambs, Xanthe, Elizabeth Jane and Shirley, have had their first hair cut. We knew they were going to have to be shorn, otherwise they would have been vulnerable to fly strike and might have ended up looking like Rasta sheep with particularly ratty albino dreads.

But we knew, too, that they would lose their darling lamb curls and so be another step along the way to being sheep. And, so, boo-hoo.

The trio, and others without names that we refer to as the wild lambs, all went back to Miles the sheep farmer’s farm to be shorn. None of them had previously made the trip on foot. The wild lambs had come to us on a trailer, whereas Xanthe and Elizabeth Jane arrived by the sheep equivalent of stretch limousine: in the passenger seat of a car. This may partly account for them believing themselves to be celebrity sheep.