Shrekapo the sheep gets a very public haircut after 3 years on the lam

A runaway merino sheep is feeling footloose and fancy-free after getting nearly 20 kilograms of wool shorn off in front of a crowd of hundreds. 

Shrekapo the sheep recently returned home to his Lake Tapeko, New Zealand, farm after a three-year hiatus looking like one "big bundle of wool," his owner, Gavin Loxton, told As It Happens guest host Dave Seglins.

"You could just about roll him like a ball," Loxton said. "I was like, oh, it's good to get him back, but now somebody has to shear him!"

Shrekapo's not the first sheep to go on a walkabout and return home looking like a rain cloud with legs. While most wild sheep shed their wool annually, domestic breeds used on farms need to be groomed regularly or their wool will just keep growing and growing.

In 2020, an Australian sheep named Prickles made international headlines when she returned home after seven years with a "glorious" fleece that weighed in at 13.6 kilograms.

Shrekapo — pronounced "SHREK-ah-poh" — is named after his hometown and Shrek, a famous New Zealand sheep who hid in caves for six years before returning home with an extra 26 kilograms of wool in 2004.

Loxton suspects Shrekapo made his escape shortly after being weaned from his mother. He admits he didn't notice the lone missing sheep at first. But to be fair, he has 5,000 of them.

About a year ago, local hunters started to spot the wooly creature on nearby Mount Edward and alerted Loxton. 

"But every time we've gone up there to find him, we've never been able to," he said.

Then one of his farm workers discovered Shrekapo hiding in an outcropping of rocks on April 16, and managed to wrangle him into her truck with the help of Loxton's son and some experienced farm dogs.

Based on the length of his wool, Loxton surmises he's missed three winter shearings. His wool was about half his body weight, and he was experiencing "wool blindness."

"The wool around his face had grown around his eyes, and he was only able to see down the edge of his nose," Loxton said. "He could find himself a meal on the ground. But, yeah, if anything was above him, he couldn't see any of that."

Over a round of drinks at the pub that night, Loxton's friend Angie Taylor suggested Loxton ask Tony Dobbs —  "a world-class" New Zealand shearer — to give Shrekapo a much-needed haircut. They could invite the whole town to come watch, and make an event out of it.

And that's exactly what they did. 

On April 18, Dobbs sheared Shrekapo in front of a crowd between 300 and 400 people. 

"Tekapo's been really, really quiet for the last two years, and it was just it was just a good timing and a good event, especially for the kids to see," Loxton said. "It was just a nice outing for the day and, yeah, Shrekapo got a haircut."

Dobbs removed 18.6 kilograms of wool from Shrekapo — roughly the weight of a sack of potatoes, or four gallons of paint.

"It's probably like a space man or woman experiencing weightlessness for the first time, because all of this weight just comes off his shoulders," Loxton said.

"You could see when he was first trying to stand up, it was like a bit of a shock, walking around with sort of no backpack on or something."

Shrekapo is no worse for wear, Loxton said, though he does appear to have "made friends" with a clothes pole. Loxton suspects the sheep got a little lonely out there with nobody but the birds and the rocks to keep him company.

"He's just sitting out there in the pony paddock there at the moment, right next to his pole, chewing his cud," Loxton said. "He's quite the happy little sheep."

 Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Katie Geleff.