Saturday, February 24, 2007

Outdoor research lab



Enroute from Dunedin to Queensland, we passed by a research institute with some pretty cool labs. The institution does research on animal husbandry, and one of their projects is seeing what sort of grass gives the best weight gain rate for sheep. So their labs consist of fenced-off areas, each with its own bit of grass and its own flock of sheep. I suppose that at the end of the test period, you weigh each one and see what the average is.

Since *our* labs require that we be stuck inside a building all day long, that sounds kind of fun.
"What do you need to do today?"
"Oh, I need to go and weigh some sheep."
Baaaa...

Not having been fast enough to take a picture of the labs, here's a picture of two very happy sheepdogs to make up for it :-). Yes, that dog is actually leaning on the sheep. I kid you not.

2 comments:

StephenC said...

Was the sheep real? It looks stuffed. In any case, it was bigger than the dog, and has formidable horns. I wonder why it should be scared by the sheep dogs.

tabbycat said...

Yes, it is real :-). Actually, the horns are kind of odd: none of the other sheep had them. As to why they would be scared of the dogs... from what I have seen of the sheep, they aren't that smart. Seriously. As soon as they let the dogs out and there was barking all around, you could see the sheep start to get more agitated. And the dogs weren't even close to them yet!