Chris, the super woolly sheep found wandering in Australia, was finally relieved this week of the heavy fleece that made it almost impossible for him to move.
Shearer Ian Elkins removed Chris' woolly coat, creating a fleece that
weighed 89 pounds, CNN reported. In comparison, a fleece taken from a sheep that is sheared on a regular basis weighs about 11 pounds. Sheep that aren't sheared can develop health conditions over time.
Chris was found recently wandering near Canberra, and a spokesperson for Australia's Royal Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals told The Canberra Times he had an estimated five years' worth of woolly growth on him.
Elkins worked with four other people who held the mildly sedated sheep still, the Times said, and it took him more than 40 minutes to remove the fleece.
"Just the sheer volume and actually getting into the fleece was quite a challenge," he told the Times.
Elkins previously held the record for the largest fleece ever sheared — a whopping 68 pounds from Big Ben, a New Zealand sheep shorn in 2014. Another sheep, Shrek, made the news and had his photo circulating online after he was found hiding in a cave and was eventually shorn of a 60-pound fleece.
"The fleece will have no commercial value. It's not a great quality of fleece, there's quite a bit of matter from running around in the bush all those years," Elkins told the Times.
RSPCA spokeswoman Jane Gregor told the Times that Chris was actually very calm when the shearing procedure started, which was a surprise because he became very upset when he was captured the day before.
"Considering how stressed the sheep was yesterday after being captured we were worried about this and we were expecting it to take two to three hours," she said. "It was quite relaxed through the whole process. We only had to stop on one occasion just to check heart rate but everything was fine."
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