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Volkswagen hires 100 sheep to cut grass at Polish solar farm as experiment in agrivoltaics (notesfrompoland.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 1 month ago (4 children)

As seen on Clarkson's Farm, sheep can be really hard to manage, they are stubborn escape artists that also find creative ways to kill themselves. Hopefully the rental comes with sheparding. Maybe the people studying are also sheparding.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Clarkson's also an idiot.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago

    It's kind of the point of the show, though. The main thing a novice needs explained to them is why bad decisions are bad. So the show provides a valuable public service, demonstrating to farmers which experimental methods work and which don't, so that farmers with less money to burn than Clarkson can gain the benefit of the experiment without bankrupting themselves.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago*

    that also find creative ways to kill themselves

    I have a friend that's a sheep farmer, and this bit is what surprised me most the first time she showed me around the farm. Her sheep graze in the mountains as long as there isn't snow, so they're probably in decent shape compared to sheep a lot of other places. STILL, she said she would find sheep every now and then that had lain down wrong, tipped over, and were unable to get up. They would literally die if she didn't find them and right them up.

    Apparently, it's something about how their organs move around, which makes them all slide over to the side if the sheep lies on its side. Once that happens, their center of mass is shifted too far over, and they'll fall over again when they try to get up. The way to fix them was to roll them over on their belly and keep them there until their organs had slid back into place...

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