Getting ready for the showing

Our local agricultural shows are just that - places to show your livestock, equipment, or produce.  It's a huge day out for the farming community and they take it very seriously.  I saw cows getting blow-dried and back combed and sheep getting their faces whitened with talc, or blackened with something else.  Hooves were being scrubbed.  Sometimes sheep were manhandled into a holding contraption which kept them still long enough to be brushed and cleaned.  They did complain about it - loudly.  But I think sheep complain about a lot of things, from what I could see.  They just want to be out eating grass, I guess - it's not their idea of fun being carted to an unfamiliar place and have strangers poke, prod and take photographs of you without so much as being asked. 

Hasselblad/60mm; FP4+ on Foma 313 paper

If your only experience of sheep is seeing them as fluffy cute wee things which run around a field then it's a shock to see how difficult it is to work with them.  For their size, they are incredibly strong animals and they take a lot of encouragement to do anything - a firm grasp of the horns (for those that have them) is required, or a tight grip around their neck.  Of course often they wriggle free and make a bolt for freedom in which case everyone and anyone around lends a hand to get them under control again.  Working with livestock ain't for the faint hearted, that's for sure.  I had to be careful picking my way through the pens and watching out for - well, everything.