In among all the breathless articles about the forthcoming Federal election, I stumbled across a delightful little story about a rogue sheep in New Zealand which went walkabout and evaded its pursuers for three years. In that time, it missed three rounds of shearing so, when it was finally introduced to the shears, it produced an 18.6 Kg fleece, which is around half its body weight.
The beast has been nicknamed Shrekapo: a combination of Shrek, of course, and Tekapo, the name of the nearby lake. He was spotted hiding among some rocks and was re-captured. The fleece was not a record, by any means: that honour is held by another runaway who was AWOL for 6 years and whose fleece weighed 27Kg. He carried the nickname Shrek as well.
I hope kiwi farmers are getting better prices for their wool than we are in Tasmania. A local friend is in the process of transforming his farm into dairy production. In past years he has run sheep and he has always used itinerant Maori shearers and this year they cost him $29 000 in wages. Sadly, he only received $6000 for the clip. If this is being replicated across Australia, we'll soon be wearing clothes with no natural fibre at all, unless NZ farmers can find a few more delinquent sheep hiding among the manuka trees.
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