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Down On The Farm

My parents had a small farm running sheep and pigs during my teenage years (BTW this is South Australia). I think the sheer variety and frequency of tasteless events during those formative years have had quite a severe and lasting effect, but hey, each to their own perversion.

I'm talking glorious events such as

* "teenage" boars forming mass homosexual humping sessions, spraying pig spoof like confetti, while those not actually involved in the humping greedily lick it off the receiving arsehole.

* A pig's ear infected from a bite swelling up to the size of a football, filled with yellow/green pus. Attempts to lance the ear were only partly effective, resulting in about a month of dripping oozing pus which would frequently become a shower as the swine shook its head - accompanied by the slapping sound of this sack of pus slopping either side of the head. When it eventually healed it dried up to a tiny scabby protrusion.

* A "stuck" lamb during birth. The lamb came out head first, and got stuck at the shoulders. While trying to catch the ewe to pull the lamb, she surprised us by being quite nimble to her feet and running down the paddock, while the lamb's head is flopping about all over the place - no hope of controlling itself and at the same time trying to take its first few breaths. Welcome to the world, kid!

* My future wife's (a nice innocent city girl) first experience of sheep very quickly changed from "Oh, aren't the sheep cute" to a dry retching disgust as high velecity projectile snot hurled straight past her.

* So many other wonderful experiences such as castrations, lancing boils and infections, seeing the results of dog and fox attacks, learning at school to kill & gut chickens, and the "knife method" of castrating lambs - slice off the bottom third of their sac, and with a specially shaped hook, literally rip the poor bastards' family jewels out. Rumor has it old farmers use their teeth, and the infection conscious ones take a swig of whiskey in between. - A new A.T cocktail perhaps.

* Nearly forgot - the young boar born with some sort of hernia which resulted in his "swine tool" emerging rearwards through his arse. It seemed to live okay until it reached market day. I never saw it bar up, if it could at all, but it does suggest some new auto-erotic possibilities. Surgery anyone?....

In amongst this veritable sea of bodily fluids, secretions and oozing pus there is one ritual which stands out above all others.

Three words - Fly Blown Sheep.

(some background for you non-rural types): Sheep in Australia have their tails cut off when they are young to try to prevent fly strike. They do it in New Zealand too, but they say its something about easier access...

The tail is removed with either a knife or rubber band (same as the ball bag). Cut the tails too short and you get a lovely bout of cancer of the vulva or arsehole appearing a few years later (from sunburn).

Another wonderfully tasteless practice, which seems to be dying out is called muelsing. I have only seen pictures of it but it goes something like this. Take one young lamb - too young and they'll probably die from shock, too old and you imagine they feel too much pain - shear the wool from around its rear, make an incision above the tail, over the hips, down the legs, under the belly and back to the start point. Make a second incision around the arse. Now strip the outer skin from between you two cuts, giving a sort of lamb skin doughnut shape. I don't know if there could be a market for these - any ideas? Remember - no anaesthetic is used. The raw subskin eventually heals as scar tissue which will never grow wool.

The whole point of these various efforts is to prevent fly strike. Sheep being the dirty stupid creatures that they are will quite happily go through life shitting and pissing without a thought to keeping their arse clean. All too frequently shit gets caught on their wool, which then catches more shit, and so this hardened formation grows at an exponential rate. These formations are called dags, and they often rattle as the dry shit clusters knock together.

Now add to this some moisture, supplied by sheep piss (which now has virtually no chance of reaching the ground without passing through the shit sculpture) or rain, plus a bit of summer heat, and you have the maggot Hilton. Maggots start out in the shit but quickly start work on the skin. In a good case, they will fan out over the rear half of the sheep.

It becomes pretty obvious from a distance, as the rear wool starts to fall off because there is now no skin left under it.

This is when it becomes time to "CRUTCH THE BLOWN SHEEP" (and I'm sure you'll have a great time with that phrase :-)

Let me describe the scene. As you pull the loose wool off, you get your first glance of this mobile maggot colony. What remains of the skin is a weeping mess bearing a close resemblance to swiss cheese. Now with the dagging shears, start cutting back the wool towards the maggot frontline. You have hit paydirt when you start cutting through black/green rotting wool. And then the smell hits you. Fermented rotting wool and flesh, fed by the weeping blood and often a side serve of pus.

Throughout the skin/pulp mixture is a seething sea of wriggling maggots, boring their way into the skin, feeding on both rotting and living tissue. The sight, combined with the stench, can pretty well guarantee a good dry retch, if not total loss of breakfast.

Continue to trim the wool back past the maggots to the good skin. Now savour this moment - look at the shears. The blades are coated with about every vile fluid you could imagine, fragments of decayed flesh and wool, PLUS numerous maggots neatly sliced in two. If you still had your breakfast, say good bye to it now.

Your task is nearly complete. With the affected wool removed (and it can be half the animal in a good case) the freshly exposed soggy mess begins to congeal in the sun. A liberal dose of "strike" powder and the stupid animal is released.

Remember not to clean up the dagging shears though. Its always much more fun to let someone else find them, complete with dried maggot carcases, a week or two later.

Enjoy.