Day Four of Our Trip Rotorua-Agradome

Overview:
This was by far our favorite activity in Rotorua. We did the farm tour and the sheep show and we had a blast. We looked around the gift shops and then went on the farm tour. Then we had lunch and went to see the sheep show. After that we headed to Kuirau Park and looked around and soaked our feet until it was time to head home for dinner and bed for the kids.


This was a pekeko we saw on the way there. My kids think I am obsessed with these birds since I always take their picture when we see them :) Maybe I am obsessed. I think they are such funny little birds except they aren't so little-they are pretty big. They are also knows as the swamp hen.

These pictures are from the sheep show. He sheared a sheep and taught us about sheering and some of the history of it. The population of sheep is much much larger than the population of people but not as big as it once was. There are now only 10 sheep per person in NZ where there used to be 22 sheep per person in 1982.

You have to be careful around the head and ears- This sheep is the Romney sheep. It is the most common sheep in NZ and it's wool is primarily used for carpets and rugs, because it is too itchy for clothing and it is very durable. I had all kinds of statistics to share with you about the sheep but I lost my paper and only remember some of them :( I think that about 58% of the sheep population in NZ are Romney's but don't quote me on that.

It looks uncomfortable for the sheep but really they need it done so it's all OK. He said that the sheep have a reflex button in their arm/leg pits kind of like when we hit our knee and it pops our leg out. They use this to pop out the sheep's legs to get in the hard spaces there for sheering.

He said that a typical sheerer will do up to 400 sheep in a day. Wow that sounds quite hard and tyring to me. I can't imagine what it does to your back. We saw pictures of the famous record holders for sheep sheering and got to read about them. It was really interesting.

At this stage of the performance they asked for volunteers for milking a cow and although the boys wanted to go up there were really scared and didn't go. But the were disappointed they didn't go so the next time he asked for volunteers both their hands went up and they were both picked. Here they are walking up on stage for who knew what??

they found out it was going to be a competition and that the winner would get a prize. I could see Enoch getting his hopes up and I was worried he might be disappointed if he didn't win. They were told to take a bottle of milk and hold it out and then drink it when he said go.

It turned out that was a joke and they had to feed their lamb the whole bottle and whoever finished first won.

They were really cute up their feeding the lambs. I think they really enjoyed it. They were smiling very big and were quite happy.

Those lambs sure seemed hungry :)

That little girl on the far left won the competition, and everyone else was dismissed from the stage. I could see Enoch's expression change and he came down trying really hard to be brave but with a quivering lip. He was SO disappointed that he didn't win. I knew he was going to need a lot of praise and love when he got back to his seat so Garrett and I both told the boys how wonderful they were and made a REALLY big deal out of it. He felt proud and happy-especially when he found out the prize was only a handful of sheep wool from the Romney that was sheered :)

Here are all of the 19 champion sheep breeds on stage: can you see the sheep dog that is running on the backs of the sheep? The show was entertaining and informative. We really enjoyed learning about the sheep. We got to see the star of the show up in the middle on the top row-the Merino-their wool is worth so much more than the Romney sheep in terms of $$. It is soft and wonderful and used to make expensive and warm clothing. I have heard it is hard to survive a winter in Wellington without merino under-clothing. We are going to buy some so we don't freeze.

After the show we got to go on stage and see all the sheep up close. Ethne and Enoch were a little afraid of being that close the the Dorset's horns, so it was hard to get a good picture.

Here the boys are with Mr. Ezra the comedian riding the big sheep dog out front.

Enoch and Ethne riding the kiwi

This was the farm tour. We got to feed the ostriches, the sheep, the alpacas and others. And we got a tour of the farm-kiwi vines, fijoa trees, olive trees and animals. We tasted the kiwi juice and Manuka honey.

Ethne wanted to but she was afraid at the same time. I had to help the kids keep their hands flat at first and get them warmed up but they did great and enjoyed all the animals.

Riding the trailer around the farm.

Kiwi vines. Did you know that the male kiwi vines don't produce fruit? They plant one male between every 3 females to pollinate.

While the kiwi's weren't yet ripe the fijoas were almost done. We were able to fill our pockets with as many as we could hold from off the ground. This is the pile of peal from all the ones we ate just at lunch. Most of these were eaten by Garrett and Enoch the two HUGE fijoa fans in the family. They were in heaven the next three days eating on them.

Picking fijoa's

Camilla feeding the alpacas-

I thought this was a cute picture of the emu. It wasn't really wild about us touching it's feathers but I did anyway and they weren't as soft as I thought they would be.

These guys were pretty funny-Camilla said they always remind her of Craig (brother-in-law). Could it be their looks??

These cows are only 3 years old and the largest cows I have EVER seen in ALL my life. That is really saying something since I grew up in Texas, and I have seen my share of cows. They are beef cows and they were twice the size of the Scotland-highland cows that were 5 years old. Easy to see why these are used for beef. We weren't aloud off the trailer with these guys around and no problems there :)

Wild turkeys hanging with the sheep

After we were done at the Agradome we went back into town and found a beautiful park. It was a free area with natural hot spots. There were fenced off mud pools and sulfur pools, a playground, a pond, trees, flowers and gorgeous vegetation and to top it all off there were foot pools in several parts of the park.

It was SO beautiful- you just can't tell from the pictures.

Here was our chosen foot pool. It was clean and hot. We took off our shoes and socks and rolled up our pants and soaked our feet for a long time. It was the perfect thing to do at this point in our vacation because we had been walking and walking and walking and it felt so good to soak our feet in all these wonderful minerals and hot water :)

These random people were so cute I just couldn't help including their pictures :)

Here is Camilla-isn't she beautiful? I think she is. Check out those dimples-truly amazing :)