Mona's (REALLY) Bad Hair Day

Icelandic sheep are a primitive breed that still have the ancient trait of shedding their wool in the spring. But there's another time when a sheep sheds her wool, and that's right after she's been sick or had a fever.

Right now, our ewe Mona is in the middle of both types at the same time.

Remember a few weeks ago, when Mona gave birth to a stillborn lamb that had been dead inside her for quite a while before it was born? I gave her a shot of penicillin at the time, but I did it in the dim light of the barn, late at night, and it wasn't until I needed to give another sheep some penicillin just recently that I noticed that my penicillin had all settled to the bottom of the bottle and needed significant amounts of shaking to mix it together properly again.

Well, I didn't notice that at the time when I gave Mona her shot, so apparently she didn't get the full benefit of the penicillin. She didn't feel well for a few days afterwards, and now she's going through a serious wool break. She would be shedding her wool for the spring anyway, but a wool break from fever is a lot more thorough---it takes off all the wool right down to the skin.

I'm due to shear the sheep for spring anyhow, but I've been delayed because it keeps raining every couple of days and you can't shear when the wool is damp. So for now, poor Mona has to walk around looking like a Muppet someone shoved halfway through a paper shredder:

How embarrassing!