Icebreaker - Pure Merino

Just thought I’d update you on what’s going on at Mt Nicholas at the moment. We are currently in the midst of shearing – we shear the merinos once a year, starting with the ewes (the female sheep). The reason we start with the girls is that they will be having their lambs in early October and we need to get their fleeces off before then. There are several reasons for this, one of the main ones being that once they have their fleece off they are more aware of the temperature and will take their lambs to shelter when it’s cold or stormy.

As we shear the ewes when it’s still quite cool at night we use a special comb on the shearing machine called a ‘cover comb’ or snow comb’ this lifts the shearing machine off the skin and leaves a thin layer of wool on the sheep for warmth (much like they are still wearing their icebreaker base layer!) so they don’t get too chilly.

Shearing is a great time of year as we get to see the results of all the year’s work in looking after the sheep in the quality of the fleeces that they are producing, I’m pleased to report that the wool’s looking great so we’ll have plenty to send on to Icebreaker! I’ve included some photos of just before the sheep are shorn, during shearing in the shed and after shearing with them just wearing their base layer!

- Kate Cocks, Mt Nicholas Station, New Zealand

We’ve just had a really cold patch of weather here in NZ and wondered how the merinos were coping, so we asked one of our growers at Mt Nicholas high country station near Queenstown. This was the response we got from Kate Cocks along with some amazing images…

Thanks for your email regarding how the merinos are doing through this cold patch of weather, generally at this time of year we do have the sheep on the lower altitude areas of the station due to the likelihood of snow, however this snow was a lot lower and deeper than the usual. My father Robert who’s been on the station 35 years described it as about a one in 15 years snow which gives you an idea of how much there was.

Mostly the sheep have done well. At this time of year they have close to a full fleece of wool on, which keeps them warm, the main issue is them being able to find food in the snow. For those that aren’t in very deep snow, up to about 30cm, they will dig down with their hooves to find food and they will also seek out native shrubs and scrub to use for shelter, eating what’s underneath and not covered in snow.

Some of the ones in deeper snow are more of a challenge, we had sheep in up to a metre of snow which is basically head height on a sheep, so not so good. We did a combination of flying hay to them via helicopter until we could get them out, walking in and tramping tracks down for them to follow us to lower altitude.

For about 250 of the worst stuck ones we had to get a bit inventive and swung a cage under a Squirrel Helicopter. We flew them out in lots of 12-15, to do this we had 4 people loading them into the cages at the top and 2 of us unloading at the bottom, there were some pretty dazed and confused sheep emerging from the cage at the bottom, but all looked pretty happy to no longer be buried in snow!

I’ve included a couple of photos for you of flying them out.

RIP Shrek – not the curmudgeonly green ogre, but the woolly colossus who made headlines around the world after evading mustering for six years.

Shrek was no ordinary merino. If anything, he looked more like a giant cauliflower than a sheep.

By the time Shrek was discovered in a cave on Bendigo sheep station near New Zealand’s Southern Alps, he had avoided the shearer’s blades for six years. His 38cm (15ins) coat of merino wool had kept him alive despite the region’s harsh, snowy winters and searingly-hot summers.

Shrek had the full Brazilian – and more – on an iceberg off the coast of Dunedin. Shrek’s fabulous ‘fro yielded 27kg (59lb) of merino wool, which is six times as much as the average sheep.

Icebreaker stepped in to keep the newly-naked Shrek cosy with a specially-made coat, which he wore for an audience with then Prime Minister Helen Clark in Wellington. He flew in planes, visited hospitals and was immortalised in best-selling books, and in the process raised money for a children’s charity.

Fame never turned Shrek’s head, and his owners said he was a sheep of exceptional personality.

Alas, Shrek’s dream run has come to an end. At 17 – almost double his life expectancy – Shrek had to be put down after suffering health problems. Station owner John Perriam described him as “a great old mate” who was ready to go to sleep.

John wants Shrek’s ashes to be scattered at the top of Aoraki/Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain, so he can look out over his old stamping ground. A service for Shrek will be held at the appropriately-named Church of the Good Shepherd.

“Layer up for warmth” is one of our favourite phrases at Icebreaker, and we’ve never met anyone who did it as well as Shrek. Farewell, old friend – we’ll miss ewe.