How do you lose nearly 80 pounds overnight? For a wild sheep in Australia, all it took was a haircut. The sheep, nicknamed Baarack by its rescuers, was sheared for the first time in a long time earlier this month, yielding a fleece that weighed about 78 pounds, USA Today reports. That’s nearly half the weight of an adult kangaroo, per Reuters and enough wool to make 490 pairs of socks or 61 sweaters, according to the Guardian. A property maintenance man spotted Baarack in the forest and reported it the Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary. The animal was brought to the sanctuary in Lancefield, north of Melbourne, where he was sheared (the sanctuary posted video of the transformation).
“It would appear Baarack was once an owned sheep. He had at one time been ear-tagged, however these appear to have been torn out by the thick matted fleece around his face,” the sanctuary’s Kyle Behrend tells Reuters. “Sheep need to be shorn at least annually otherwise the fleece continues to grow and grow, as happened here.” His impressive fleece notwithstanding, Baarack was in pretty bad shape: he was underweight and could barely see because of the wool. But he appears to be on the mend. In an update video, the sanctuary says the sheep is “getting more confident every day.” (More uplifting news stories.)
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