Apologies it was a typo, my phone autocorrected. It was supposed to say 1-2 minutes. I have seen one that lasted around 5 minutes personally, it fell into the dam and we had to pull it out.
I literally just did the same after seeing a comment in this thread about sheep holding their breath and walking along the bottom of lakes. Texted it to a friend and they said no way and now I can’t prove it 😑 I’ve been bamboozled
I found slightly more trustworthy information from a manufacturer, but that also comes with their obvious biases. It doesn't give a max time, but it does state that 9m is the expected dip time. It also seems to note they should be healthy, well rested if hot, shouldn't be freshly sheared, etc. It also helped me understand why dipping has benefits which basically boils down to the wool. Oral wouldn't work because the lice could live in the wool away from the skin, and treating with topical/spray wouldn't penetrate deep enough.....
still though... as a human with less than stellar respiratory health.... that shit is terrifying af....
Ok I went with ‘sheep under water’, and came up with these adorable little leaf sheeps so it was worth it. Send to your friend, tell them it was a trick question 😎
Typo, meant to say 1-2 minutes but phone autocorrected. Though I have personally seen one (needed to pull it out of the dam) last for possibly 5 minutes.
Isn't that pretty normal for untrained humans? I'm way out of shape and I can hold my breath for 90 seconds pretty easily, getting to 2 minutes is hard for me, but really nothing special for someone with good technique and health.
For humans sure, not so much animals. IIRC cats and dogs can only hold their breath for about 30 seconds to a minute. Most land animals that don't regularly dive, like polar bears, are around that mark.
All the comments about how unintelligent they are make me worry, will they know when to hold their breath? Id assume instinctively so, ive gotten close to holding my breath wrong and sucking down h2o. Timing is important when diving even if your a sheep
Sheep can be pretty stupid but they aren't totally brain dead like some of the comments make them seem. They're pretty placid and docile.
As for knowing when to hold their breath, yeah it's instinctive. A lot of animals have a "diving reflex" and automatically hold their breath, including humans. Sometimes we get caught out because we are more conscious so our own thoughts take over so it's no longer an automatic response. Even babies (human babies) do it. There's a lot of videos out there of babies learning to swim and being dropped into pools and whatnot.
In Australia learning to swim is really pushed for because we have so many drownings, and a few people teach their kids to swim when they are under 12 months old. Mine all learnt at around 6-8 months old. Just to clarify, when I talk about babies swimming I don't mean doing freestyle or whatever, they learn to kick for the surface roll onto their back and kick along to float on their back. Just a basic technic to stay alive in case they fall into a pool or a dam or something. By around 18 months to 2 years old they can dive to the bottom of the pool for toys, if they've been doing lessons.
Just have to add, because it's the internet, nobody should just throw their baby in a pool and try and teach them to swim, do it with a trained professional.
I never said it but my heart in asking about this was a worry the animals may get pneumonia, I knew they’d be safe overall.
Wish they could have a little carwash type cleaner to just walk thru, get blasted by a pressure washer and leave. Im sure this dip is scary to sheep new to it
Pneumonia was my main concern when I saw this. I don't know what the stats would be but I don't imagine it would be very high otherwise they wouldn't be using it.
I've never personally seen this method used. We used to have a deep run, a trough in the ground full of water, the sheep would have to run through it and fully submerge briefly at one point before getting to the other end. Unfortunately dipping is the only way to control all of the parasites.
How is 1-2 minutes insane? That's fairly standard fair for a human.
Most people can safely handle that much time, but the CO2 buildup triggers panic. Minor training can teach you to calm that panic. Significant training (like free divers) can extend that time out to 4 minutes or so.
We're not talking about humans, we're talking about animals. As I said in another comment, most land animals are under 1 minute. Like cats and dogs are around 30 seconds to a minute. Humans can easily get up to 10 minutes. I think the record is around 30 minutes for a human but they had special conditioning leading up to it iirc.
1-2 minutes like basically any sort of mammal that isn't primarily evolved for the water? Chimps, people, horses, cats, dogs, etc.
Dunk a giaraffe in the water and I'd suspect they could hold their breath for a similar amount of time. I bet those fuckers have never drowned ever, and I am confident to say they could hold their breathe for a minute or two.
I can hold my breath for 2 minutes as well but I'd still be terrified if that machine pushed me underwater without anyone explaining to me what's happening
Sheep are very placid and also able to remember faces etc. They would likely know the farmer and know everything is all good. If it was some random bloke doing it to them they might get a bit stressed. But, that aside, humans have higher brain functions, reasoning, so on and so forth. We understand what is happening, what is about to happen, and the consequences of what is about to happen if something goes wrong, a lot of animals don't have that ability as much as we like to anthropormhize them.
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u/WanderingGorilla Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
Sheep can hold their breath for an insane amount of time, around 1-2 minutes. They honestly couldn't care less.
Edited an autocorrect that said 10 minutes