Shorn

So early last week I came down with what turned out to be one hell of a cold. Hit me hard enough Tuesday morning that by that night I realized I needed to call in sick for Wednesday night. No fever, but I was still pretty sure none of my coworkers wanted me to share it. I made it in for Friday night's shift and am much improved, but I'm still dealing with lingering effects of it. And on top of that, Tuck came down with pneumonia very suddenly Friday morning, though I caught it almost as soon as it broke and he's responded incredibly well to antibiotics.

Anyway, in the midst of all this, Paula was able to get in touch with a nearby shearer to come shear Angus and Shaun, but David really wanted to get photos of me holding the boys first so y'all could get a better idea of just how tiny they are. Here's Angus:



And a pre-shorn Shaun:



If you embiggen, you can see all the weed seeds they'd picked up from being let into overgrown pasture that morning (not by me!). That should be fun to card out.

At any rate, the shearer arrived, started shearing away Shaun's belly fleece and made a slightly disappointing discovery. Whoever castrated him didn't make sure his testicles were in their proper place before placing the band, so he has no scrotum anymore, but his family jewels are tucked right up in his crotchular area. Poop.

And then we found the same had happened with Angus. Double poop.

So probably next week sometime I'll be doing a bit of surgery to rectify that situation. Fortunately, it shouldn't be terribly difficult, but it's one more thing I'd rather not have on my plate, either figuratively or literally. It does, at least, explain the head-butting issue.

Anyway, now they're even tinier and look like this:



And once they were all done and let back out into the pasture, they did what rams tend to do, especially when they're freshly shorn. They decided to figure out whether there was going to be a new king of the hill.



You'll notice Shaun doesn't look so brown anymore. If you didn't read my earlier post about it, his color is mooskit, which is primarily grey with brown fibers. Since this was their first shearing, he still had his baby coloring, but from now on he'll look more like these.