Day 6

Christchurch, NZ

New Zealand is a rugged country and we are along its coastline not its mountains called the Southern Alps.  Our cruise ship docked in a bay outside Christchurch, and we had to travel by bus through a tunnel to reach the city.

But it turned out the city is quite modern and there seemed to be little touring of the City.  Instead, many of us were taken to a sheep farm which didn’t sound exciting.

That changed once we were lead to the sheep shearing arena.  The wrangler doing the shearing brought out a lamb to show him off.  Then he brought out a full grown ewe and started his work. It’s not a haircut, as the shearing is to remove the whole coat as a single unit.  It’s not easy maneuvering a live 100 pound animal while robbing her of her warm coat.

This happens once a year for each sheep.

Wool has many fabric competitors now-a-days, so raising sheep for wool has been on the decline.  Many a rancher is getting out of sheep raising as it doesn’t pay.  Remember all those logs in the last post?  Many ranchers are now converting to tree production.  The ranchers land is very fertile, so growing big fat trees in a short period of time makes sense.

Sheep dogs are great working dogs.  Most that we saw were border collies or half border collie half lab.  They live to work as their masters want.  The dogs on this ranch responded to various whistles.  They do make whistles for this, but this ranch has a dog handler who makes distinct human whistle sounds.

There were about 40 of us watching the handler direct the dog to herd sheep that seemed to be a 1/2 mile away.  The dog ran as fast as he possibly could and quickly gathered the sheep.

The handler and dog work as a team.  Obviously the dog does most of the work.

Later in the day, I ventured into Christchurch to get a NZ shear for myself.  

G’day