Sheep Farm and The Sheep

Kodaikanal upland villages bore a lot of grasslands and sholas around them, providing a great feeding ground for cattle. So, sheep rearing is a natural habit; and to enhance the custom, the Central Government has established a sheep farm in a village called Mannavanur to produce wool from the sheep. 

Recently, I watched a video on youtube on the real purpose of the wool produced here: Sheep farm set up after India's defeat in the war with China in 1962. The main reason for the loss in the war was the cold that prevailed at the India-China border. Indian soldiers couldn't bear the cold because of the lack of woolen cloths available at that time, and keeping that in mind, the government brought the sheep farm on the 1340 acres of rolling grasslands at an altitude of 2000 meters MSL.

I visited a part of the grasslands during one of my trips to Kodaikanal in 2009 - that time, I came close with a herd of sheep from the farm. A little boy was driving those sheep, and they were simultaneously grazing the ground (heads-down like new brides) and kept moving that way. 

I captured the sheep (in the picture above) in 2019 on the roadside near Poombarai. One of the scenic villages of Kodaikanal, on the way to Mannavanur. A rope and bell tied to the neck of the sheep show it belongs to a villager, and the sheep was munching on cabbage leaves from a sack left beside. 

The sheep was cute and dirt as well and smelled not good. Its fur was a tangle, perhaps because of that, because it smelled, or due to the munching of cabbage. Anyway, it cooperated with shots. 

The sheep in the farm produce wool once a year, and every year in March,  the sheep goes through fur removal after growing enough of the same. After removing, the fur transports as a raw material to a place (I forget) where the fur collected from elsewhere goes into the process of making woolen blankets for soldiers defending the country against cold. 

The view of the sheep farm and sheep enclosures

Each sheep produces 1 to 3 kg of fur each year, but in the process, they are halved. The Sheep farm (Southern Regional Research Centre)  in Mannavanur is a regional center of the Central Sheep & Wool Research Institute, a premier Institution of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi. (source wiki)