The Unchosen Ones
May 23, 2017 1:12 PM   Subscribe

The Unchosen Ones is a project by R.J. Kern featuring photographs of non-winning sheep and their exhibitors from 2016 Minnesota county fairs. Project Statement.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage (42 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
They're good sheep*

*even the ones I think are actually goats.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:22 PM on May 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


I thought some were goats too. I read a newspaper article that called them all goats which had people yelling in comments that they were sheep. I'm not a sheep or a goat person so I don't know, but I thought these pictures were fascinating.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 1:27 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sometimes goats act like sheep. It gets confusing.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 1:36 PM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


There are definitely goats.
posted by holborne at 1:38 PM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell.
posted by Floydd at 1:43 PM on May 23, 2017 [11 favorites]


sheep that look like goats (and goats that look like sheep) are definitely A Thing.

to wit:
So once upon a time, goats and sheep were essentially the same animal, and all of them had hair. Now, you can do some stuff with hair, but you can’t do a lot, so mostly sheep/goats were kept for meat and milk.

Except then a mutation showed up, and some of the sheep/goats had WOOL instead. And someone realized that 1. you could spin that shit, and 2. then you could WEAVE that shit, and 3. IT GREW BACK.

Generations of selective breeding ensued. Two visibly discrete species emerged, one primarily for meat and milk, and the other primarily for wool. They also have different behavioural characteristics, because independence was not helpful in a sheep, so it was bred out of them. Sheep remain one of the few non-draft animals that we farm even though they are not delicious.

The most similar part of sheep and goats that remains today is their skeleton. On an archaeological dig, you find THOUSANDS of bones and bone fragments that can only be identified as “sheep/goat”. It’s incredibly frustrating, but also kind of hilarious after you’ve spent enough time in the sun.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 1:46 PM on May 23, 2017 [21 favorites]


I am Midwestern, but I do not have a whole lot of experience with livestock; should I be concerned, impressed, or nonplussed with/at this sheetgoat's balls?

(I enjoyed these photos, I am sorry that this question is my contribution to the discussion)
posted by dismas at 1:50 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wow Buster!
posted by not_the_water at 1:51 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


"Sheep remain one of the few non-draft animals that we farm even though they are not delicious."

Not delicious? Sure. Yup. Just put all that disgusting lamb right there in my freezer, you don't have to thank me.
posted by Floydd at 1:54 PM on May 23, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'm assuming that the order of the human and sheep/goat names matches the photos, but they're really interchangeable.
posted by carter at 1:54 PM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


Sheep have ENORMOUS balls.

Source: I'm kind of weirdly addicted to UK-produced rural life/farming programs. There's a lot of sheep. I have watched a lot of sheep sex.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:55 PM on May 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


See, my thought on that, Floydd, was that does this mean that goat is actually more delicious?

I grew up on stories of cabrito but have never been able to actually obtain it, and this is intensifying my desire to do so.
posted by Sequence at 1:56 PM on May 23, 2017


Go, goat!
Scram, lamb!
Boo hoo, ewe!
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:00 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


The demon that lives in the air, that sounded kind of dodgy to me, since there are both wild sheep and goats. And checking around, Britannica says that the wild ancestor of the domestic goat is the bezoar, Capra aegagrus, and that the wild ancestor of the domestic sheep is the mouflon, Ovis orientalis. So not separated by human breeding.
posted by tavella at 2:16 PM on May 23, 2017 [10 favorites]


(Though humans did apparently develop woolly sheep as a subdivision of sheep, so that part is right, just not the bit about domestic goats and sheep starting from the same domesticated animal.)
posted by tavella at 2:21 PM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


When I was a freshman in high school, I was a volunteer at the State Fair. One day my job was to help out in the sheep barn. There, they had me hand out prize ribbons to sheep. Most people really didn't want a ribbon if they sheep wasn't first, and a few of the first place winners didn't want ribbons either. They had me hand out some of the refused ribbons to kids. Reader, that is how I ended up with a prize winning sheep ribbon from the State Fair.
posted by drezdn at 2:31 PM on May 23, 2017 [14 favorites]


I liked this title referencing this painting...
posted by jim in austin at 2:35 PM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


The rangers at Banff National Park are happy to help disambiguate between goats and sheep: GOat Sheep GOat
posted by Lexica at 2:36 PM on May 23, 2017 [7 favorites]


i once attended the poweshiek county (iowa) state fair and was delighted at the variety of awards given to livestock that were not "hey you got a good sheep you get to go to des moines," i.e., 'sheep with the prettiest eyes'
posted by dismas at 2:39 PM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


They're good sheep, Brint.
posted by praemunire at 3:00 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


For about 16 years a former girlfriend and I raised Navajo Churros. We started showing them at our local County Fair in Open Class Sheep. We also didn't dock tails, so our sheep had the tails that god gave them. Didn't win many ribbons, but so many folks asked us about our "goats", because sheep didn't have horns and sheep didn't have long tails and sheep were white. So much explaining.
posted by jgaiser at 3:05 PM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


In the first photo, Kenzie and Hootie look like they were painted by one of the Dutch Masters. That light! That facial expression!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:35 PM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


The pictures are absolutely amazing, and as someone who has spent a large part of her life at country fairs, also very moving.
posted by mumimor at 4:03 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


Sheep remain one of the few non-draft animals that we farm even though they are not delicious

I am Australian and I will fight you over this.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:10 PM on May 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


The sheep in this one is almost unnervingly geometric. Its back is like a straightedge and the angle to the neck looks like a perfect right angle.
posted by mhum at 4:17 PM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


Sheep remain one of the few non-draft animals that we farm even though they are not delicious

I nearly spit out my sheep burger when I read that!
posted by blue_beetle at 4:24 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


JESUS CHRIST BUSTER
posted by saladin at 4:42 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


sheep and goat are v difft. both are super yummy. these photos are great
posted by PinkMoose at 5:31 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


See, my thought on that, Floydd, was that does this mean that goat is actually more delicious?

They are different but both are tasty, as PinkMoose (also a delicious animal, it should be noted) says.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:49 PM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


Isn't this a sheep? The people on the highway to my in-laws raise sheep for wool and I'm pretty sure they raise these.
posted by fiercekitten at 5:56 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


The rangers at Banff National Park are happy to help disambiguate between goats and sheep: GOat Sheep GOat yt

OK this is straight up amazing
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:58 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


These are amazing photographs - brilliant collection.
posted by fever-trees at 5:59 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Isn't this a sheep?

Affirmative
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:00 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


Those are great pics, but I was rather distracted by the seamless the photographer set up and then didn't use as a seamless but instead shot to include the background around and behind the seamless. Weird. Oh, well. The other photos on that site, of animals in the wild, are really nice too.
posted by old_growler at 6:33 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Omg someone named a sheep DUMB
posted by davidmsc at 10:17 PM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can't believe how surprised I was to see a little girl with short hair (Natalie, with her unnamed sheep). So cute. But I feel like I haven't seen a little girl with short hair since I was a little girl (with long hair) about 30 years ago.
posted by cilantro at 1:45 AM on May 24, 2017


wow, you city folks, let me lay down some ovis knowledge.

this is a collection of sheep and goats. in order, this is what is in the pictures: goat, goat, goat, goat, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, goats, two sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, goat, goat, sheep, sheep, goat, sheep, sheep, goats, two sheep, sheep, goat, sheep, goat

@dismas: rams are naturally polygamous, and ewes come into heat generally when the weather gets cooler, so they all come into heat at once, so a ram needs to be packing some bigger than you'd expect testes to get all his work done in a few weeks. If you see a male sheep without giant testicles, it's a whether, which is the term for a castrated ram.

@drezdn: in all my years of showing livestock, I never turned down a ribbon, even a 11th place ugly brown ribbon. That show you helped at must've had a weird vibe.

@jgaiser: even when I showed the sheepiest sheep of sheep, Hampshires, city people would come and ask about my goats.

@mhum: that sheep is fitted with it's wool shaped to give it very clean lines. The majority of the sheep that are meat breeds in these pictures are "slick sheared" because the person showing them feels the judge should be looking at the actual musculature instead of trying to feel it through a wool illusion. When I showed sheep the culture was in transition, it started with everyone doing these amazing wool sculptures with sheep inside them and moved to slick shearing, and it is amazing how much faster after slick shearing caught on that sheep got bigger and better muscled. You couldn't hide the flaws any more.

@The demon that lives in the air: lamp chops are delicious.

@fiercekitten: Yes, that's a hampshire sheep, a breed usually raised for meat and a secondary crop of wool.
posted by jrishel at 6:22 AM on May 24, 2017 [12 favorites]


(goats aren't ovine, they're caprine, as in capricious and Capricorn)
posted by jrishel at 6:24 AM on May 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: goat, goat, goat, goat, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, goats, two sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, goat, goat, sheep, sheep, goat, sheep, sheep, goats, two sheep, sheep, goat, sheep, goat
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:48 AM on May 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yeah, but then we'll fight over whether it should be "goose" or "grey duck."
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:02 AM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: amazing wool sculptures with sheep inside them
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:44 PM on May 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


MetaFilter: packing some bigger than you'd expect testes
posted by Pallas Athena at 4:45 PM on May 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


« Older Things cats don't like   |   The only sanity is a cup of tea. / The music is in... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments