Sheep shearing and woolly minds
Sheep shearing is now banned at the Kent County Show. Don't they understand a sheep's life?

By Paul Heiney*

Animal "lovers" have complained, and the organisers of the Kent County Show have caved in. There will be no more public sheep shearing competitions at this annual event "in case the sheep are cut". The bleating complainants will think this progress. Farmers say it is one more example of the lack of understanding between town and country. They are both wrong. What we have here is a fundamental misunderstanding of sheep.

In my farming days, I spent more time with sheep than most of the woolly-minded grumblers at these shearing events. Those who are horrified at the sight of the smallest droplet of blood on a newly shorn sheep ought to spend a full year tending a flock. It is an endless litany of life, death and disease on a biblical scale. It makes the plagues of Egypt look like Mary had a little lamb.

It is not the shepherds' fault. I was once advised by an old man of the hills that "sheep have only one ambition in life and that is to die". No truer words were ever spoken about this nervous and confused animal. If you were to plant a single landmine in the Wembley turf, and release one sheep, within five minutes it would have blown itself to pieces.

Sheep are simply not designed to live. You might give them an acre of lush grass all to themselves, yet they will still bludgeon their way through the thickest brambles in search of something poorer to eat on the far side. Even their ambitions are misguided. Darwin should have taken a closer look - they are, admittedly with human aid, evolving in the wrong direction.

For example, the heavier breeds can roll on their backs and become unable to right themselves, paddling their pathetic legs in the air, bloated, while resigning themselves to death. If they are lucky enough to survive that, they will become prey to the disgusting flies that like nothing more than a warm and wet fleece in which to lay their eggs. These in turn hatch into maggots that burrow through the skin and eat the sheep alive.

And who prevents both these things? The shearer. Without a heavy fleece a sheep will regain its feet; without sodden wool the flies will seek food elsewhere. It is wrong to brand the shearer as some kind of assailant. A day under supervision at a county show ground is probably one of the most secure days in a sheep's life, and now the poor things are to be deprived of that.

The shearers are on the sheep's side and it is right to celebrate their skill in this way. If I were heavy in fleece, I'd rather a shearer with a pair of clippers came to my rescue than someone armed only with sentimental ignorance.

*The author is a well known writer and broadcaster in the UK and over 30 years has appeared on all Britain's major radio and television networks. He wrote a farmer's diary for The Times from 1990 to 1995.