Vandalised Sheep

The reason why I stopped by the Bobby Sands’s toilet was to take this image of colourful sheep. It isn’t quite the ‘decisive moment’ thinking but something related to it. You see as I was driving along the road the light was constantly changing as well as the landscape. Sometimes there would be something spectacular, other times they would be quite mundane, the main thing is stopping whenever you think something might make a photograph. That is sometimes the thing that separates a boring photographer from an interesting one. So I saw these sheep and stopped. Once I was in front of them I tried to get some sort of response by roaring, screeching and shouting ‘Oy’.

For an urbanite like myself this just looks like wacky rural vandalism. I posted the photo up on Facebook and a variety of people were keen to explain the situation to me. Apparently the ram wears a raddle which is covered in different dyes. The dye is changed periodically so the colour tells the farmer when a ewe is likely to give birth.