The Combleat Mower

The ideal lawn mower would be one that makes no noise, consumes no gasoline, emits no noxious fumes, does not rust when left out in the rain--and besides all that, is self-starting and fertilizes grass while cutting it. Anette van Dorp, 22, an enterprising agriculture student in Bonn, West Germany, concluded last year that such a machine already exists--only it is called a sheep. So she persuaded her mother Doris, the wife of a prosperous architect, to lend her $15,700, and last spring set up an ewe business named Gesellschaft fur Schafsverleih (free translation: Rent-a-Sheep Co.). It buys sheep from farmers and rents them to businesses and home owners who want their grass cut cheap.

Since April, the company has rented 300 sheep to clients that include a school, a doctor and local subsidiaries of Alcoa and American Home Products. Customers must take a minimum of five sheep for the whole summer and graze them on at least 1 1/4acres of lawn that is free of chemicals. The fee: $7.80 per sheep per season. That barely covers insurance on the animals. But Anette and her partners. Mother Doris, 48, and Brother Tom, 18, expect to make a sizable profit in the fall by taking back the sheep--by then nicely fattened--and selling them to butchers and breeders.

Rent-a-sheep requests have been pouring in from all over Germany, and Doris is thinking of expanding the business by selling partnerships to individuals. For them, the sheepfold could be a tax shelter: Germany levies no taxes on individuals' capital gains from the sale of assets (other than real estate) held for six months, which is just about as long as Gesellschaft fur Schafsverleih plans to own its sheep. Meanwhile, Anette tries to make sure that customers protect the animals from predators of all kinds. She turned down one customer located near a community of Turks who, she feared, might have found the lure of shish kebab on the hoof irresistible.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.