Shearing Away the Day

When he’s not helping rural New Zealand ranchers and farmers deal with the ravages of hailstorms, floods, and domestic storms, Colin spends his weekends judging sheep shearing and dog herding competitions at the many A&P – agricultural and produce – shows that rotate from town to town in the austral summer. These two skills are vital to the sheep ranching business in New Zealand, and represent the two un-mechanized links in the chain that connects a sheep in New Zealand with a Merino sweater in New York City. Like calf-roping in the American West, these local ranching skills become the basis of vigorous local – and national, as well as global – competition.

Jennifer and I, on our way north out of Christchurch toward the North Island, traveled through an incredibly diverse landscape – one minute Pacific Coast Highway, another minute Dakota badlands, another few minutes Kansas prairie, and then a turn of western North Carolina hills and valleys. We ended up in Kaikoura, a peninsula on the eastern shore of the north tip of the South Island, jutting out into the Pacific Ocean.

We spent a Saturday afternoon at the Kaikoura A&P, and luckily found ourselves sitting next to Colin as he judged the local sheep shearing contest. In a clipped Kiwi accent, Colin volunteered reams of information on the subject of sheep shearing – a vital part of New Zealand’s economy, culture, and history. On a broad plain just outside of town, adjacent to the turquoise waters of the bay formed by the Kaikoura Peninsula, we received a free lesson into the finer points of sheep shearing.

For an entry fee of $10 NZD, sheep shearers from around the South Island enter into the Kaikoura competition – one of the smaller and less remunerative tests around. They compete for a 1st prize of $60 NZD. There are categories for junior shearers, senior shearers, and, from time-to-time, women, but truth be told, the trade is dominated by men. It’s physically demanding to “manhandle” sheep onto their backs, and single-handedly run a pair of shears across their entire bodies without cutting or injuring them.

The competition took place on a small stage, with three small stalls, each fronted with a wooden gate. As the starter’s bell rings, each shearer enters his stall and pulls a single sheep out, taking care to keep the other sheep in the stall. For the senior shearers, each contestant is required to shear five sheep, and shearers are scored on a combination of time, as well as the efficiency and safety of the shearing. Twice in our short time, waiting sheep scaled the wooden stall’s fence, with local fans being forced to tackle these 100 kg+ animals, avoiding their sharp hooves.

Randy, the fastest “mechanical” shearer we witnessed, managed to remove the wool from five sheep in a mere 8 minutes and 53 seconds – averaging less-than-two minutes per sheep. Pulling the sheep out, the shearer first runs the clippers along the belly and legs of the sheep, removing the dirty, discolored wool first, where it is collected into a separate bin for more rigorous cleaning and processing. Once the dirty wool is shorn, the shearer turns to the sides and top of the sheep, as well as the neck and head. At full speed, the shearer relies more on touch and feel than sight.

Shearers that “mix-and-match” the wool from the underbelly and the cleaner, top wool are penalized in the competition, since the efficient sorting of wool after shearing is a vital part of the process of transforming wool into sweaters. From time to time, we’d see a bloody red spot appear on the post-shorn pink skin of the sheep. The blade had nicked the skin – another penalty for the shearer. Colin explained that each nick incurred a penalty depending on size.

Jennifer and I were each amazed at the speed with which these regional shearing contestants ran their clippers over the sheep, and the gentleness of their hands and bodies as they held the sheep in position. Colin explained that the sheep needed to be held firmly but gently to avoid exciting them unduly. The fastest shearers seemed to have the calmest sheep.

Each sheep generates about 2.5 kg of raw wool, with a kilogram of wool bringing about $3.90 NZD at wholesale. The sheep pictured here had wool about 6-9 months old, so the wool fell in large tufts; had the sheep been left in the fields longer before shearing, a skilled shearer could have removed a single pelt of wool. In cold weather, in remote areas, shearers are expected to use hand shears, and of course, there was a category for this in the competition. It's slower, but still, with razor-sharp shears, these men could strip the wool off a sheep in under 4 minutes.

As I mentioned, we were amazed at the speed with which these local shearers plied their trade. Colin brought us back to reality by sharing with us his “little red book” of world and national sheep shearing records. It turns out that our local shearers are operating at a snail’s pace. The world record for number of sheep shorn in a 9-hour day is 721 – an astonishing 80 sheep/hour, or 1 sheep every 45 seconds, minute-in, minute-out over a 9-hour period! It’s impossible for the two of us to imagine this, having been amazed at speeds (for just 5 sheep!) of 1:45/sheep.

It was a fun way to spend a few hours; Colin was characteristically generous with his time and knowledge, and we also met some Alaskans who “winter” here in Kaikoura. After our topologically-diverse arrival path, we were not surprised to be able to spend time at a local farmer/rancher fair, just several hundred meters west of the beautiful ocean waters of Kaikoura Bay, surrounded by the fir trees of the Kaikoura mountain range.

I was reminded of Mark Twain’s quote that “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a minute.” It turns out Twain traveled to New Zealand, around the time the Brits and now-Kiwis were making war with the Maori, and praised the Maori as patriots. He might also have then quipped: “If you don’t like the view, just turn your head.” ... and to which I might now add: “… unless you’re a sheep who values its wool.”