Rudolf Schaubach, from the city of Fillach, in southern Austria, was inspired to create the sheep chain mail by the growing number of wolf attacks in his country and in neighboring Germany. After three years, he finally came up with a viable prototype that he had been testing on farms in the Austrian Alps until recently, when the project sparked controversy among sheep farmers.
Schaubach’s idea was simple – come up with a type of armor that could protect the sheep from wolf bites while allowing it to move around and feed freely. He came up with a light plastic net covered in sharp spikes that he claims would cause enough pain to the wolf to discourage it from taking another bite.
“A wolf is an intelligent animal, I don’t believe it would try to bite a sheep a second time,” the inventor told Austrian reporters.
However, the reactions from the general public and sheep farmers were mostly negative. Most of them called the chain mail both impractical from the point of view of overall costs, as well as inefficient in stopping wolf attacks.
René Krüger from the town of Wersbe, who keeps about 1,000 sheep, rejected Schaubach’s idea as “impractical” and “harmful” for the animal. He warned that the sheep’s wool could become entangled in the mesh over time, and that wolves, instead of giving up, would eventually change tactics and attack exposed body parts such as the legs or the head.
Gina Strampe, from the Association for Agricultural Cultivation of Lower Saxony, also expressed skepticism about Rudolf Schaubach’s sheep chain mail, claiming that it wasn’t a financially sustainable solution, because no one could afford to dress hundreds, even thousands of animals in the plastic mesh.
Rudolf Schaubach has so far dismissed all criticism, claiming that people only judged his sheep chain mail after watching photos of it, instead of giving it a try. Although he himself has yet to test it in real-life conditions, to see how it performs in case of a wolf attack, he did put it on sheep, and claims that one sheep wore the protective net for several days without any problems, moving and eating normally.
Following the growing controversy around his sheep chain mail, Schaubach has stopped testing his invention in Austria and is currently seeking it opportunities to test some pleace else for now.
