ANDREW “Scooter” Killeen was contract mustering with CMC Contracting on a station about 100 kilometres North-East of Packsaddle last week when he came across an enormous sheep.
“Probably up there with one of the biggest I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“We were mustering, but there were maybe 140 stragglers that needed shearing.
“The station owners asked if we could shear the straggler mob, and that’s when we came across it.”
Mr Killeen said the sheep’s fleece had been overgrown by a couple of years and decided to take on the challenge of shearing it.
“It definitely wasn’t a normal sheep, he would have stood a lot taller, probably about a head taller than all the other sheep,” he said.
“I guess you could say almost about my height.”
Mr Killeen said an average sheep takes him about two minutes to shear, but this sheep took about four, and the resulting fleece was enormous.
“The fleece was huge but would only be worth maybe $30, $40,” he said.
He said he’s tempted to offer the station owners the money so he can frame the fleece and resell it.
“It’s a giant art piece, if people can pay two million dollars for a banana, they’d surely pay good money for the giant fleece.”
Mr Killeen has been shearing, crutching and mustering for almost 13 years.
“I started by going out lamb-marking and processing lambs,” he said.
“One of the shearers fell crook one day so I grabbed the hand piece and pretended to shear, and the crew said well while you’re there you may as well actually shear it.”
“So I battled away for eight hours, trying to figure out how to shear a sheep.”
Mr Killeen said he sheared about 10 sheep by the end of that day, but nowadays averages around 120 sheep a day.
He said he prefers to crutch over shearing and aims to crutch 700 sheep per day when out on the station.
“I also do a bit of mustering, lamb-marking, fencing, general stationing, a bit of building, a bit of spray painting,” he said.
“A jack of all trades and a master of none.”
