At some point during our trip, Sarah "sheepishly" admitted that she really wanted to go to
Sheepworld on the way back to Auckland. The remaining 3 of us begrudgingly agreed despite the hefty $27 price tag for entrance and a show. Thank goodness for Sarah's humble admission as our Sheepworld experience turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the trip!
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| Sheepworld!! |
We started our Sheepworld experience with a light lunch followed by a tour through the petting zoo park. We saw (and fed) cute little lambs, rather gross cows, emus, and an aggressive little duck. Our little ducky friend followed us around for the entire walk and gobbled food pellets out of our hands with his silly little bill.
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| Our ducky friend |
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| You can tell my true feelings about the cow and his tongue being near me |
Being a weekday in the middle of winter, the four of us made up the entire audience of the afternoon show. The show started with a demonstration of sheep herding with a traditional "staring" sheep dog. This type of dog doesn't bark but instead herds the sheep simply by staring them down. We were then treated to a demonstration of a new dog in training. The farmer was training a new different type of sheep dog that herds using the direction of it's barking. Click
here for a video of the new pup in training.
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| The new "barking" dog in training |
After the herding demonstration, the sheep needed sorting and Sarah was the lucky volunteer for this job. She sorted the sheep by the color painted on their head as the sheep ran through the chute. Next up, a sheering demonstration. Or in the case of only a 4 person audience, a hands on sheering workshop! Sarah, Mark and I all got a turn at sheering the sheep with the help of the farmer. Click
here for a video of my sheering experience and the restless pup in training.
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| Hands on sheering! |
For the grand finale, 5 little white lambs (5 weeks old) were brought in for bottle feeding. Each of us got to bottle feed a little cutie (I got to feed two at the same time) and they gobbled it down! I think Sarah and I were in heaven at this point!
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| Serious cuteness! |
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| Twins |
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| The feeding line up...can this be any cuter? |
Just as we were preparing to leave, the farmer brought in two tiny baby, brown lambs (not even a week old) that were ready for one of their first bottle feedings having just been separated from their mother. We got to hold the lambs while feeding them a bottle. They had the prettiest blue eyes and struggled a little with the feeding. Sarah was a natural but I needed a little help to get my little one to eat.
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| Little lamby |
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| Samies! |
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| That is one happy girl! |
1 comments:
It sounds like you were baaaad at sheep feeding. However, i watched you shearing and ewe were a natural.
I like the staring herding dogs better than barking. Those are the type we we see every year at the Scottish Highland games. One year, Kathie was enlisted to try and use the dog to corral some sheep. She was not as good as the primary shepherd and his dog.
I like the four-in-a-row show of y'all feeding the lambs.