Casting Sheep and Aging

It has nothing to do with broken bones.  You do it for foot trims, and shearing.
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Now I’ll try and describe the process of getting the sheep in this position.
First your eye down your sheep.  This involves picking out which sheep you want to catch out out the herd of sheep.
 
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The main reason for picking the sheep you want to catch is to prevent you from randomly running around changing your focus as they start to scatter.


Once you have picked your sheep you need to approach it and try not to startle it.  Then you use one hand and lift up it’s chin, the other hand you put on the tail to stop it from backing up.  For better handling you can hold the sheep against a fence or gate.

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At his point you can age the sheep by looking at its teeth.



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These are milk teeth.  All the teeth are narrow and the same size.





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The first two adult teeth have ruptured.  They are a lot broader than the milk teeth.
This means the sheep is around 1 yr 3 months old.



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The 2nd set of adult teeth have erupted.
1 yr 9 months.




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The 3rd set have erupted.  The tooth on the right is the last milk tooth and the tooth beside it is an adult tooth that has just erupted.



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Another picture showing the 3rd set of adult teeth.
2 yrs 3 months.



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All permanent adult teeth are in at 2 yrs 9 months.  The gums recede making the teeth look more spaced out.





Okay, lets move on to casting the sheep.  Once you have caught the sheep you want to turn the head inwards toward it’s hip.  If you wish to try to exhaust the sheep by holding it in this format and running around in a circle again and again, go ahead.  I did.  I’ll tell you though, it exhausts you and not the sheep. (AT ALL).



Then you put your hand just in front of the hip and while taking a step backwards slightly you lift up with the hand on the hip.  Did I mention that the sheep we were handling are Suffolk and Scottish Mule (both ~90kg).
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If you do this part incorrectly you end up running around in a circle again.  If you do it correctly you end up with this:

















Once you have them like this they become very floppy and will willingly sit there.














They even get this relaxed:









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Now you know how to do it.  It may sound easy.  Heck it might even look easy if you watch someone experienced do it.  Take it from me, IT’s NOT!  There is a definitely a trick to it and once you’ve got it, you’ve got it.

You say Tomato…

We are in the middle of our Embryology lectures now.  Learning about how an embryo develops into recognizable parts, but if only it was that easy.  We learn the 3 germ layers and from there, where each type of tissue in the body derives from.  It’s more complicated than that, but I won’t put you through that.

So that’s what I did today - “revised” my embryology.  That’s what they say here instead of "studying” 

You don’t give a cashier a “bill”, you give them a “note”.  Don’t go shopping for waterproof “pants”, look for waterproof “trousers”.  The term pants here refers to underwear.  You don’t trim your “bangs”, it’s your “fringe”.  You would call me on my “mobile”, give me directions to the “toilet” and put your “rubbish” in the “bin”.  A “jumper” isn’t an outfit for a baby, it’s a sweater.

I also learned that you “flip” a coin, but “cast” a sheep.  Stay tuned till tomorrow for those details!

So I have been slacking…

 

I’ll come right out and admit it.  I’ve been slacking.  I promised everyone that I would keep my blog updated, oops. 

I’m still working on getting into a good rhythm / schedule with school and studying and cleaning and all those things that you have to do but don’t really want to sometimes.  I’ve been spoiled working as a paramedic with my 5 days on, 2 days off, 5 days off, 2 days on schedule.  How have people managed to do this with only 2 days off?!?  That’s probably my biggest adjustment so far – not having long enough weekends.  Especially with only a washer/dryer combo, you can’t put a new load in the washer and move the first load into the dryer.  Instead you have to take the wet clothes out, hang them up, hand iron the wrinkles out, then put the next load in.  If you forgot to put softener into the wash, you end up with wrinkly stiff shirts…  Did I mention that the washer drum is about the size of 3 paint cans?

 

Meanwhile my old washer that I left behind was huge. 

Well…maybe not quite that big.  But it definitely fit more than my current one.  Putting 6 shirts in it is about the limit.  AND the drying thing is a whole number story.

I always thought a washer/dryer would be a great thing.  Put your dirty clothes in and then an hour or so later take out your clean fluffed dry clothes.  NOT EVEN CLOSE.

First off, if you over fill it you’re in trouble.  Second, because you are using the same drum to wash and dry it’s very wet inside when it starts to dry.  That means that it heats up all that water and steams your clothes.  If you take your clothes out before they are dry they are hot steaming soaking wet articles that you try and hang up without stretching.  So I bet you are thinking, “duh! why not leave them in until they are fully dry?”.  Well you have to guess how long to put the dryer on, because you can’t just open the door stick your hand in and check.  You have to stop the machine by turning the dial to off, then wait 2 minutes for the door to unlock.  Usually by that point I’ve gotten sidetracked and forgotten that I was doing the laundry…

Anyways, what was I saying?  Oh yeah, laundry.  So if you happen to guess longer than necessary to dry your clothes you end up with dry clothes in nice compact wrinkled balls. 

And a bottle of this

just isn’t going to cut it.

 

 

 

 

Till tomorrow when I’ll post again!