🕯️ LEGENDS GARDEN
🐑 Shrek
Merino sheep (Ovis aries) · Bendigo Station, Tarras, Central Otago, New Zealand
Lives in Legends Garden
Shrek was a Merino wether born on 27 November 1994 who dodged six consecutive annual musters on a Central Otago high-country station by hiding in caves. When he was finally caught on 15 April 2004 he was carrying 27 kg of fleece, six times what a Merino normally grows, and New Zealand watched him being shorn live on national television. He spent the rest of his life as a fundraising celebrity, including a second shearing on an iceberg floating off Dunedin in 2006. He was euthanised on 6 June 2011 at 16.
What they do
Plants his feet and shakes the entire fleece from nose to tail, the whole grey mass wobbling a beat behind his body, then settles with the wool swinging..
Six years of doing exactly as he pleased, and it never entirely wore off.
Lore
- ★His 2004 fleece weighed 27 kg — enough wool for twenty men's suits.
- ★His first shearing took a professional shearer about 20 minutes and was broadcast live on New Zealand national television.
- ★In November 2006 he was shorn again on an iceberg floating off the coast of Dunedin.
- ★Auctions and appearances in his name raised more than NZ$150,000 for children's medical charities.
Helping the real one
No verified way to support this animal exists.
We will not invent one.
Shrek died in 2011 and there is no fund in his name. His fleece auctions raised money for New Zealand children's medical charities during his lifetime, but no ongoing route exists.
Where this comes from
Every link here was checked twice before it was published. If one is dead or wrong, tell us.