Recovering Ethereally

Nicholas Hely Hutchinson (British, b.1955)

Silent Lane

Fat tailed sheep is not a single specific breed of sheep. It’s a catchall word like “Health care worker”.

There’s tons and tons of different breeds. They all store fat in their tails, but fall into two main categories: WIDE tails and LONG tails

Wide tails store fat in the rump area and have no visible tails.

Long tails store fat in the tail itself, which vary in length in different breeds. In the olden days, people took pride in breeding sheep with the longest tail. They are not so popular today as it’s hard to find a decent tail cart on Amazon.

Speaking of Tail carts, they come in different styles and designs. We dont have any that are actually preserved, but old drawing of them show different wheels harnesses.

Some of them are literally just skateboards

Back in the day, breeding sheep with long dragging tails was all the rage. Nowadays different tails types have been developed to prevent them from dragging their tails on the ground. Such as the “folded tail” or the “Only fat at the base” Tail

Despite fat tail sheep being the most common sheep breeds in the world, most people in the west have never heard of them. The West likes Wool Sheep. Fat tails are strictly meat sheep and have little useful wool. They also do poorly in colder climates

There’s a huge community of shepherds on youtube that script, choreograph and shoot elaborate videos for their sheep complete uplifting music to highlight their best qualities (for sale and stud) It is fantastic. Such as this one:

People kept bringing up Fat Bottomed Girls. Ya’ll are wrong. These are fat bottomed BOYS. Sheep are often continuously bred, so the females are constantly getting pregnant, giving birth and nursing.

That’s very hard on the body, so they can’t build up as much fat as the boys.

The fattest sheep, the ones with the truly VAST tails, rocking them little carts are ALWAYS males.

This is why the Bible specifically states that ONLY the rumps of the Males are to fit to be offered to the lord……

Picture: God desiring the tail

“And he shall offer of the sacrifice of the peace offering an offering made by fire unto the LORD; the fat thereof, and the WHOLE rump” -Leviticus 3:9

I mean… look.

Arguably these are just minor details and doesnt matter….

But beyond it’s teachings the bible is also a work of literature about life in the ancient world. And on some level these kinds of small details bring a sort of richness to these depictions of real…