Flash player is required to view weather conditions. It's hard to say that any of these facts constitute the weirdest thing about a case that brought 600 people to the Clark County Courthouse the day the decision was announced and caused such deep divisions in the Pitchin and South Charleston communities that people refused to talk to those on the other side of the controversy and fights broke out in school yards along the same fault lines. It's hard to say that any of these facts...

Feeding the new industrial knitwear centres (mostly in China and Tirupur in India) are 107 million sheep in Australia, 70 per cent providing merino wool, which, with cashmere, is the yarn of choice. To counter this, the wool industry practises "surgical mulesing", cutting away an area around the sheep's backside to prevent the blowfly from laying eggs. Unfortunately, more skin also equals more fly-strike - when flies lay parasitic eggs that poison the sheep, leading to an agonising death....

The number of cases of deadly bluetongue virus on British farms has risen to 129, prompting Britain's most senior vet to warn that the industry is being "tipped over the edge" He criticised the government for failing to offer farmers compensation for animals killed by disease: "It has been a truly dire year for farming in the UK. This has meant sheep and cattle that would normally have been moved to winter pastures elsewhere have been left stranded on fields that have been grazed out...

The annual banquet that brings together hundreds of representatives from industry, agriculture and politics also highlights local farmers through such honors as the Century Farm Award. He said less than a third of family businesses today make it to a second generation as succeeding generations feel the need to branch into other enterprises. Today they grow corn, soybeans, barley and hay and have a small flock of sheep. LancasterOnline.com: News : Banquet honors farms. LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa...

Research began in the late 1990s to determine the old farmstead's outbuildings - constructed on cypress foundations, they had long since rotted - and what the house would have looked like before it was added onto and modernized. The corncrib, the outhouse with its three seats, the brick-floor smokehouse, the two-room slave cabin and the kitchen were reconstructed as authentically as possible. He raised cattle, pigs and sheep, owned at least two horses and an ox. The Dare County Board of...

While they re a delicacy in Asia and their native South America, they re valued for their fleece fiber here, which is noticeably softer and less coarse than sheep wool. Alpaca fleece is coveted because it s softer than wool, yet provides more warmth and is more breathable. People who can t wear sheep s wool often can wear alpaca, Honey said. Because of his love for animals, Honey considered starting a dog daycare or a pet food delivery service. An alpaca looks like a cross between a sheep...