BDCWire
Kevin Slane

When a sheep doesn’t have someone to shear his wool, the wool keeps growing. When a sheep runs away from his flock and spends five or six years on the lam, he looks like this.

That’s Chris, an Australian sheep discovered by a hiker Wednesday and taken in by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

While Chris’s fluff may be funny to look at, the RSPCA knew all that wool was a danger to the animal.

“While he could barely walk or fit through our paddock doors, our biggest fear was that he might have serious infections under that mass of wool,” the RSPCA wrote on its website. “We were also unsure if he could live through this ordeal as he was clearly stressed and could die easily of shock.”

After the RSPCA put out a call for a shearer who could handle the hairy job, four-time Australian Shearing Championship winner Ian Elkins volunteered, reported the Australian Broadcasting Company.

RSPCA CEO Tammy Van Denge live-tweeted as the shear madness went down.

Partway through, however, Ven Dange took a break from tweeting to ensure that Chris got a clean shave.

When the job was done, the RSPCA had shorn enough wool to sew quite a few sweaters.

As for Chris, he got a temporary sweater of his own. The RSPCA said on their website that he will be recovering for a few days before being put up for adoption.

The RSPCA claims the estimated 40.5 kg (89 pounds) sheared from Chris smashes the world record, previously held by New Zealand sheep Big Ben, who had 64 pounds sheared off in 2014. But a few New Zealanders were skeptical, with stuff.co.nz quoting a Kiwi as saying,”An estimate isn’t as good as a world record.”

Guess it makes sense that a country that holds sheep shearing championships and where sheep have long been rumored to outnumber people 20:1 (though it’s reportedly closer to 7:1) would take their sheep business seriously.