Axe body spray finds an unlikely new customer: grouchy sheep

livemint.com:

HARLESTON, England—A few years ago, retired police officer Sam Bryce posted a question on the U.K. Facebook group “Ladies Who Lamb." A ram she owned had become very ill-tempered and was picking on his castrated fieldmate. Was there anything the other shepherdesses could suggest to calm him? The replies came back within minutes: Lynx Africa.

Lynx is the U.K. name for the popular deodorant sold in the U.S. as Axe, a product that for decades has been marketed as a way for young men to become instantly irresistible to lasses.

In recent years, some shepherdesses have discovered the deodorant has an auxiliary benefit: When used among their flocks, it masks the hormones that get the boys butting heads. “There’s no argy-bargy, no rowing," Bryce says of the deodorant’s effects. Since getting clued in, Bryce has regularly used a few long sprays of Lynx on Cash and Casper, two testosterone-addled 4-year-old rams she keeps some 100 miles northeast of London.

The pair have lived together since they were five months old but are prone to fight following any period of separation. “They puff themselves up and square up to each other and make this grunting noise," explains Bryce, 55 years old, who often favors unwieldy Wellington boots paired with purple nail polish and sparkly eye shadow. “It’s like when you see drunk men put their fists up and say, ‘I’ll fight you.’ " The deodorant isn’t just for the fellas.

Caitlin Jenkins, a 31-year-old shepherdess in nearby Suffolk, has used Lynx to successfully convince ewes to mother orphaned lambs. Ewes identify their offspring by scent and spraying them both confuses the ewe into believing a lamb is her own, says Jenkins. “I always go for Lynx Africa because it has a very distinctive strong