The Great New Zealand Muster

At it’s heart, New Zealand is a farming land, the landscape littered with sheep. In a country where the sheep to people ratio is 8 to 1 (and used to be as high as 22 to 1), it makes sense that they celebrate their prized animals. The small town of Te Kuiti has adopted the moniker “Sheep Shearing Capital of the World” and holds a four day celebration of various sheep related activities in April ever year. It’s officially called “ The Great New Zealand Muster” and if I’m comparing it to something in the US, it is a mix between a country fair (small town charm), a circus (the spectacle) and a rodeo (the manly pursuit of sheep shearing). People walked around with taffy apples, kettle corn and American Hot Dogs (really a corn dog) and enjoyed local bands blasting classics. There were three unique events that I won’t soon forget:

Sheep Racing – Think that sheep are lazy? Think again, these were some competitive sheep all vying for first place in the sprint. They even had jockeys pushing them to reach the prize at the finish line. The sheep even had cheeky nicknames such as “Lamborghini” and “Michael Jackson” (for the sheep that was both Black and White). The pre-race favourite with the green jockey showed good speed for a sheep and placed first.

The Great Muster – The New Zealand equivalent of the Running with the Bulls. Although instead of getting gored, you might get a little wool burn. The residents of Te Kuiti stand on the sidewalks while over 2,000 sheep make their way through the center of town. Sheep dogs help keep the order and the sheep headed in the right direction. The excitement doesn’t last all that long, the sheep have traversed the main street after about 5 minutes. However it is a thrilling sight to see a mass of sheep takeover the town.

New Zealand Sheep Shearing Championships – How fast do you think it would take you to shear a sheep? You’d need to be pretty fast to make the shearing championships……10 sheep in about 8 minutes. I attended the semi-finals where two heats of six competitors furiously attempted to shear as quickly as possible. The sheep selected for this event probably aren’t thrilled about being part of the competition. They get completely abused in that 45 seconds of shearing. The contestants don’t hesitate to throw the sheep around, putting them in extremely uncomfortable looking conditions. After the 45 seconds of sheep embarrassment they get a slap on the butt and scramble to get out of the way.

The competition is judged by a mixture of time and the quality of sheering. The time is the base part of the score and then points will be added if there are sheep to be judged to be not completely shorn or have nicks from the shearing. Lowest score wins. The competitors hailed from all corners of New Zealand and the sweat pouring off their face gave you a sense of the effort they put into this.