r/nextfuckinglevel • u/g_ricko89 • Nov 13 '21

Shepherd dog's focus and resilience.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

96.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

123

u/micahamey Nov 13 '21

Theft mostly. They are highly sought after. Like to the point where when a young man stole 4 lambs to replace his own that had died to complications, he ended up facing almost 6 years in prison. I don't remember the outcome off hand.

33

u/wolfgang784 Nov 13 '21

Is the stock kept artificially low? Couldn't a farmer just breed the hell out of them rather than butchering them? Or is there a legit reason they haven't replaced standard sheep more?

33

u/no_cal_woolgrower Nov 13 '21

Might be the case elsewhere but here in the US they are not rare nor expensive

53

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '21

Yeah, that price tag was just because of the "perfect genetics", not because it was just a nice looking Texel sheep. Same goes with any farm animal, for example the most expensive dairy cow sold was for $1.2 million, because of genetics.

32

u/knot13 Nov 13 '21

You ever heard of the horse Fusaichi Pegasus? Sold for $70 million, and has a stud fee of $200,000 which can be done over 200 times a year.

21

u/tangentandhyperbole Nov 13 '21

But, will he ever get to know love? :(

Quick someone write that romcom script.

1

u/privateTortoise Nov 14 '21

I saw a strange scifi film on tv late one night when I was a kid that kind of had this as a theme. I should have gone to bed but it was the guy from miami vice so I gave it a go. Best I say no more about the plot but I will add he has a telepathic dog and has the exciting title of Boy and his dog.

5

u/deliciouscorn Nov 13 '21 edited Nov 13 '21

That sounds pretty cheap for a horse with wings

4

u/veringer Nov 13 '21

Despite all we've learned about genetics, there are still so many unknowns. There's no test you can administer to a sheep (or any animal, really) that could yield a "perfect" score. So, I suspect "perfect genetics" is short-hand for "this sheep has all the breeding characteristics we want in spades, and no apparent or known defects". This could include genetic test results that indicate that a breeding sheep isn't a carrier of some undesirable (but not immediately apparent) genetic disease (ie. muscular dystrophy or Legg-Calve-Perthes).

3

u/no_cal_woolgrower Nov 13 '21

Breed the best to the best and hope for the best