Sheep Shearing

Sheep Shearing was a very interesting experience! There are about 30 sheep for every person in New Zealand. The family that we are staying with at the moment do sheep shearing as one of their businesses so they gave us the opportunity to go along, see how it is all done, and help for the day.

Wool compacting machine

When we got there, the first thing I noticed was the smell. It certainly wasn't very pleasant. After a few minutes I couldn't smell it so much, but every time I stepped outside and then back into the shearing shed it was overpowering. The other thing was the noise! 4 shearers going at once, music, and of course the unhappy bleating of a few hundred sheep.

I started out helping the ladies with the rousing, or wool sorting. It basically involved gathering the piles of wool from around the sheep as the shearers were working and then piling it all in the centre near the wool compacting machine.

Andrew herding sheep

 The other ladies there were mainly doing the sorting of the wool and grading it into the different qualities, so when they shoved a pile in my direction I would add it to the large pile. Andrew helped gather the wool and stomp it down into the compacting machine, which compresses the wool down into huge heavy bags.

After awhile, they finished the one batch of sheep and brought a new set in. They also had 300 lambs brought in that day, which was neat to see. The new set only needed their rears shaved, or crutching, so there wasn't  as much to help with. I decided to go help herd the sheep into the pens since the shearers were moving through them pretty quickly.

A rousing experience

The sheep are extremely docile and are much lighter than I expected them to be. To herd them, I basically had to walk behind them and wave my arms at them. Most of sheep herding seemed to be getting them pointed in the right direction and then walking around them so that they ran away from me and into the next pen. Occasionally there would be an extremely stubborn sheep that required grabbing the scruff of her neck and the wool at the butt and giving her a bit of a shove in the right direction. Andrew had a couple of the sheep try to back up under his legs a few times too, which was quite comical.