Baaaaaaaa

We have been passing the Sheep World sign on our way back and forth from Auckland, and finally we went to check it out! After hyping it up so much in my head I was expected to be let down, but it was amazing! We learned about sheep herding and shearing, and saw demonstrations. And we got to see and feed cute baby animals! The only thing we missed out on was the river eel feeding, which didn't happen for some reason. Scott was particularly disappointed, but I'm not sure if I'm upset since eels are creepy! Anyways, still a great day, here are some pictures :)

Finally! Hehe the logo is so cute!

Hmm those aren't sheep

Ahhhh the lambs are so cute!!!! 

I want to take one home :) I wonder what Dexter would think. 

What a beautiful and huge rooster

These grown-upish chicks look ridiculous, hehe. 

Greg and Li'l Sebastian

Cool looking goat

Piggies!

The herding demonstration was really cool. The shepard will typically have a group of dogs to help him herd the sheep. We saw demonstrations of the 2 kinds of dogs: The eye dog herds the sheep in towards the shepard by staring them in the eye and racing around the sheep to bunch them together. He might also nip at them to keep them in line. This is typically what I picture when I think of "sheep dog". There is also another style of dog that drives the sheep by barking at them - this time they are herded away from the shepard. This dog is a huntaway, and they are breeded especially for their strong bark.

The eye dog is rounding up the sheep from the far pen

He's herding them all to the shepard - amazing! 

The huntaway is barking to drive the sheep away to the other end of the pen

This dog was just learning, so he didn't do any hearding

Next we had a demonstration of sheep shearing. But first the shearers have to sort the sheep by gender and age. The sheep normally have notches in their ears to indicate this (given to them when they are born), but in our demonstration the sheep had colours on their heads. I got to help with the sheep sorting - it was tricky but I think I did a good job :)

The sheep shearers get paid by the sheep, so the faster they are the more money they make. Shearers from NZ often traval abroad to shear elsewhere that have different seasons or where they can make more money. Different kinds of wool fetch a different price, so if you are a marino sheep shearer you can make even more money. But unfortunately there are not many marino sheep in NZ because they don't do well in the climate here.

We learned a lot about sheep today :) Hopefully I remembered it all correctly.

I'm sorting the sheep...ahh they are coming so fast!

The shearer holds the sheep firmly so it doesn't struggle

Buzzzzzzz

Greg gets to try sheep shearing (with some help)

And then the best part (in my opinion), we got to bottle feed some lambs! They were super hungry so they stampeded in to get to the milk bottles. So cute! I was lucky and got to feed 2 :)

Hungry little lambs!

Fighting for some milk

One of my lambs was the slowest, so when the others were finished they crowded in  to  get the last drops

This piglet gets his lunch too!

And some calves

What a fun day! I totally recommend Sheep World to anyone who wants to learn more able sheep, or just see some cute animals.

One more lamb picture for the road :) Bye!