A sheep weighed down by a hefty 88-pound (40 kg) fleece, unable to stand, has been rescued from an isolated spot in the Australian mountains after being found by an elderly bushwalker. His rescuers suspect that if left unattended, the sheep wouldn’t have survived.
“I’m not sure how long the poor fellow had been lying there, but I do know that, judging by the length of his fleece, he had not been shorn in many a year, and had he not been found when he was, he would have passed from this world,” Pam Ahern, the founder and director of nonprofit Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary, said in a news release.
Edgar’s Mission, a farm sanctuary located in the Australian town of Lancefield, Victoria, received a call in early March from bushwalker Chris Dyson, who had discovered the “wool-burdened sheep” collapsed on Mount Alexander in poor health. Edgar’s Mission assessed that his case was critical, and sent a rescue team to retrieve him from the mountain.
“We wondered at first blush with Alex, could his life even be saved, and would the kindest thing have been to let him pass from this world,” they wrote. “And then we lifted the shroud of wool from his face and our eyes met, and in that instant it was so strikingly clear he wanted to live.”
Local sheep shearer Holly Kendall was called and spent over an hour, nearing midnight, ridding Alex of 88 pounds of “urine-soaked, stick and twig-matted, insect-encrusted fleece,” leaving the frail sheep standing on wobbly legs in its wake.
Once his fleece was gone, Alex was introduced to two friendly Edgar’s Mission ewes, named Chloe and Molly Brown, who helped him feel at ease in the sanctuary surrounds.
Alex is one of the lucky ones, said his rescuers, although his case is not unique.
Edgar’s Mission took in another ram in 2021, named Baarack, similarly burdened by a 76-pound (34.5 kg) fleece and desperately in need of help. Both Baarack and Alex were around 7 years old and castrated, both were of Merino breeding, and both exemplified the massive problems that can occur when sheep are not shorn.
Yet both Baarack and Alex also prove how resilient sheep can be in the face of adversity, and how struggling animals can get their second chance at life when the right people step in to help them.
The selectively bred sheep of today, Edgar’s Mission explained in their news release, need to be shorn at least once annually to avoid critical welfare issues. The nonprofit’s farm sanctuary, set on 153 acres of Lancefield’s Macedon Ranges, currently provides lifelong care to over 450 animals, including rescued rams like Alex and Baarack.
Governed by a motto—“If we could live happy and healthy lives without harming others, why wouldn’t we?”—the sanctuary is committed to education, community outreach, advocacy, and sanctuary tours in hopes of encouraging others to extend compassion to the animal kingdom.
