Farmyard Fridays #11: One Sheep Five Ways

I've mentioned before in Farmyard Fridays that grown sheep can tend to seem a little boring in comparison to their offspring. They definitely don't have the charm and personality that, for instance, goats or donkeys have, at least on the surface. However, I feel I've been maligning the species for a while now, and it's unfair. They may not have the same quirks and foibles of their caprine cousins, but they do have the edge over them in one way: they are super super useful.

Okay, so pigs are notoriously a useful farmyard feature. You can, so I have been informed, use every part of a pig in cooking. This is a pretty hideous thing to consider and I try not to most of the time. Sheep, however, are equally if not more useful, for the following reasons. I give you One Sheep Five Ways - how you can maximise the use of your sheep.

1. Obviously, there is one thing staring you in the face about sheep, at least for half of the year. They have a seriously epic fleece which has been farmed for perhaps as long as 8000 years. Being able to make clothes out of an animal and still retain the animal does set them apart from pretty much every other farmyard creature; skinning a cow for leather does tend to render the cow null and void. What's more, the fleece will grow back and you can do the same again the next year. This may seem obvious but it is pretty incredible when you think about it. Sheep can go from this:

to this:

in sheer (!) seconds in the right hand. And from that can come so many useful things which we use without thinking about them: jumpers and socks and blankets and sheepskin rugs and this oh so useful and decorative set of figures.

(It's a knitted Archbishop of Canterbury! Like, how useful is that? God bless sheep.)

It doesn't stop with clothes though. Oh no. There's more that woolly fleece of goodness can offer up yet.

2. Lanolin. There's a word you'll have seen hundreds of times in your life, but I for couldn't say where I've seen it until recently. There are so many uses for this grease that it's hard to know where to start. Here's possibly the most common household lanolin product:

However, this waxy substance is also used in a variety of cosmetics, as lubricant for some musical instruments and to break in baseball mitts. It's pretty multi-purpose, and whilst some people are allergic to it, it's an extremely common ingredient in many products.

Lanolin is a grease found in the sebaceous glands of wool-bearing animals. Basically, it's the grease in a sheep's fleece. It can be squeezed out before the fleece is used for other purposes as we've already looked at above. So you can not only clothe yourself using your sheep, you can moisturise and generally prettify yourself too.

Your sheep isn't finished yet though. With a bit of training you can absolutely

3. Race your sheep. I think this pretty much speaks for itself. It's not the Grand National or the Derby but look!

It's sheep freaking racing! And jumping!

If this is not starting to make you want a sheep, I don't know if we'd ever be friends.

Of course, all of this requires some effort on your part. Shearing sheep is a skill and I imagine training a sheep to bounce over barrels isn't really a walk in the park. All of this is bound to make you hungry. So why not try

4. Milking your sheep. I know, it sounds disgusting, but sheep produce milk as any mammal does, and whilst goats' milk has been the increasingly popular alternative to cows' milk in recent years, sheep's milk is used in products such as feta, Roquefort and ricotta. It is significantly higher in fats, proteins and minerals than cows' milk, making it more calorific but perfect for cheese making. You can therefore have a munch on your homemade produce whilst wrestling your sheep around a racetrack. It will definitely give you energy.

And then, alas, the end comes to us all. When you've had enough of shearing and training and milking and generally tending to your sheep, you can always

5. Eat your sheep. Dependent upon the age of your sheep, you can produce lamb, hogget or mutton, and the organs are also popularly eaten as offal. Admittedly, it's not the most healthy meat around, with a nutritional profile to beef, but it is pretty tasty. It's very hard to look at this and not feel a tad peckish

And besides, if you want to raise up your next sheep friend, you'll need some fuel for the task ahead.

Farmyard Fridays Fact #11: Sheep are super super useful.

A sixth use for your sheep has come to light in the last week. Sandwiched nicely in between uses 4 and 5, comes this ingenious use for your sheep:

Shakhter Karagandy threatened with disciplinary proceedings over sheep sacrifice ritual before games

It may have worked for them; they did, after all, beat Celtic 2-0, so never rule this sixth use for your sheep out. It is, however, possibly a step too far for some of us, meaning that this particularly hypothetical sheep will be saved from this ritual.

This week's Farmyard Friday is absolutely inspired by a visit to West Lodge Rural Centre in Northamptonshire a couple of weeks ago which was frankly amazing and well worth a visit for anyone with or without children.

Farmyard Friday #8: Help a sheep brother out

Something really strange happened today. I looked out of the window and - it was (albeit briefly) sunny. I'm not making this up: it wasn't snowing, it wasn't raining and the sky was something other than grey for a whole series of minutes. Could it be that spring is finally here?

One sure fire way to know whether spring is here or not is whether there are lambs in the fields, and I have a reliable source (Countryfile's Adam - surely one of the hottest farmers ever) that this has indeed happened.

Cue gratuitous lamb photo

Lambs are a very Easter-y kind of animal, and given that my Easter break doesn't end for another nine days, and that I'm not even apologising for that, I figured I could probably spin out another Easter special Farmyard Friday. However, this fact isn't as cheerful as that little chap above would have you believe.

It's always struck me about baby animals that they're just so much more fun than adult animals. Watch calves or lambs or foals or chicks and they're so much more interesting watch than their adult counterparts. Even puppies and kittens gambol about a little more, although perhaps the complete domestication of dogs and cats means that they tend to live their whole lives in a strange suspension of ageing, a little like Louis Spence or Madonna. Farmyard animals seem to acquire a more mature standing much sooner in their lives and stop the skipping around that we see above. Sheep, in general, seem to have their feet much more firmly on the ground than lambs.

And this is likely for a very good reason. Becoming mature, even for humans, is less about getting bigger and having more freedom, and more about taking greater responsibility for yourself and others. Even with their flock-like mentality, sheep must know this, and so their not jumping around with all four feet off the ground is sensible. Because look what could happen if it mistimed its landing:

Yes, it all seem super-funny, until you realise that poor sheep here can't get back up from that position; they are unable to flip themselves back over. Even more worrying, they can actually die from being in that position too long as they were simply never designed to lie on their back. Their digestive system slows down and they fill with gas and ultimately suffocate to death.

Not so funny now, right?

However, you, yes, you can save a sheep's life. If you see a sheep lying on its back, it isn't just chilling. It needs help. With one quick flip over, they're all good again. So help a sheep brother out and flip them over.

Farmyard Friday Fact #8: A sheep will die if it lies on its back too long.

Another cute lamb pic to cheer everyone up after that depressing fact.