Sheep like cuddly toys
If you fancy having a sheep as a pet and also as a lovable lawn mower, a breed from Switzerland which is being farmed in North Canterbury could just be what you’re after and it’s featured this week on Country Calendar. Melenie Parkes reports.
When Melissa Cowan spotted the Swiss Valais Blacknose online, her husband Hayden Cowan had a “hunch” that the endearing sheep could be popular in New Zealand.
“They just look like a cuddly toy, don’t they?” says Melissa.
With their fluffy white coats, black faces, hocks, feet and ears (females also have a black patch on their bottoms) it’s easy to see the appeal of the Swiss Valais Blacknose.
“That’s what I liked about them when I first saw them on Facebook. I just tried to convince Hayden we should get one as a pet but he saw the potential – that I would not be the only person who wanted one as a pet – and so perhaps we could do something more with it.”
The Cowans first imported Swiss Valais Blacknose embryos from the UK in 2018 which were then implanted into surrogate ewes at their Motunau Beach farm in North Canterbury.
Among those first lambs was a ‘spitti’, which is a sheep with reverse colouring, a black coat with white features. They are considered good luck in Switzerland. Parkdale Black Beauty was the first pure spitti born in New Zealand and remains the only one in the country.
“She is really special and we are certainly lucky to have her,” says Melissa.
At the moment the Cowans have about 25 of these unique animals at Parkdale Valais Blacknose Sheep and they have no shortage of buyers wanting one of their own.
“Some people want to buy them and start breeding them like us, but the majority are really just pets,” says Hayden.
Melissa says that local breeding programmes mean that we will have our own variety of the Valais Blacknose here in New Zealand.
“There is a breeding-up kind of guideline, so you can put your
Romney over your Valais ram and after five generations you can get what they would class as a New Zealand Valais Blacknose.”
“Luckily for us, the New Zealand Sheep Breeders have allowed us to register that.
“So that’s pretty cool because I don’t think other countries have got anything official like that.”
While they are often described as ‘the cutest sheep in the world’, the Cowans say it’s not just the appearance of the Swiss Valais Blacknose that has caused them to surge in popularity globally. They also have a charming nature to match.
“They’ve got really cool personalities. They’re very friendly. The kids love them because they do come up and let the kids cuddle them,” says Melissa.
Hayden adds that they are “not the normal New Zealand sheep”.
“Definitely different personalities, sort of like a big, soft, shaggy dog really. They just want to be mates.”
In their homeland of Switzerland, the Swiss Valais Blacknose is bred for its meat and wool. But as a single sheep can cost upwards of several thousand dollars in New Zealand – depending on its lineage – these adorable lawnmowers are strictly pets for now.
Hayden says their fast-growing wool is “on the coarser spectrum” and as such has little commercial value at present here.
“It’s funny that even though it’s coarse it’s still soft.”
“It grows quite long and quite fast,” says Melissa. “You have to shear them every five to six months.”
“Probably grows twice as much as a normal sheep does,” says Hayden.
The sheep’s long, thick coat helps protect it from the chilly conditions of its natural habitat in the Swiss mountains.
And although they make wonderful companions, these sheep aren’t petite. This is no handbag pet.
“They are quite a big sheep,” says Hayden. “Same size as your Romney, which is the standard sheep breed in New Zealand. One of the rams I’ve got now, when he was a year old he was 100 kilos.”
While the profile of the Swiss Valais Blacknose is rising, these sweet sheep are still very much a novelty in New Zealand with just a handful of breeders raising them.
For the Cowans, taking a gamble on these winsome, woolly creatures has been extremely rewarding.
Melissa says, “We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into when we started but it’s been a pretty cool journey so far.”
Top: Hayden Cowan shears a Swiss Valais Blacknose ewe. Above: Melissa Cowan with Basil the ram.
Being a cop in charge of an elite murder investigations team in London is a tough job. It’s even tougher when your wife has been missing for months and some colleagues think you may know more than you’re letting on. That’s the setting for London Kills, where Detective Inspector David Bradford leads a specialist group comprising Detective Sergeant Vivienne Cole, Detective Constable Rob Brady and trainee Detective Constable Billie Fitzgerald, who tackle some of the most puzzling crimes in England’s capital city. The first season ended with more questions than answers and season two gets off to a bad start for Det Insp Bradford when his stepdaughter Carly drunkenly accuses him, in front of his team, of killing her mother, who is still missing. While Det Sgt Cole (Sharon Small) initially dismisses Carly’s outburst, it transpires that Det Const Brady (Bailey Patrick) has information which puts his boss’ innocence in question. And that’s all against the backdrop of a murder case where builders have uncovered the body of a student whose death initially seems to have been a suicide after his pregnant girlfriend left him for another man. Hugo Speer, whose breakthrough was in the 1997 movie The Full Monty, plays Det Insp Bradford. Since then, he has also appeared
in feature films Deathwatch and The Interpreter along with a wide range of television work including Men Behaving Badly, Clocking Off, The Last Detective, Boudica, The Rotters’ Club and two series of the epic TV drama Britannia.
An episode of London Kills is filmed each week over the five weeks of a season and is shot live on the city’s streets with a small crew – much like a documentary.
It’s an approach that Speer enjoys.
“I think filming on the streets has been great. Maybe if you were doing it in small, smaller provincial towns it would be more exciting for the public – but I think a lot of the London folk are fairly cosmopolitan and fairly blase. I think they’re used to seeing things like this so, you know, they might turn their heads a little bit but, generally speaking, we’ve been OK.
“We don’t have people shouting, swearing, throwing things at us. We’re filming it in a way that is kind of on the move, almost kind of like ‘guerilla-ish’ sort of thing, so it’s in a way we’re almost, not going unnoticed, but people aren’t really batting that much of an eyelid.”
Speer describes his character as, “A complex man. He got himself into a little bit of trouble a few years back because he likes the ladies and he got too close to a witness and got himself demoted. He was given a second opportunity, so he has been made the head of the murder investigations team. He’s finally back at being Detective Inspector and he’s determined not to lose this opportunity again.”
But Bradford’s most senior team member, Det Sgt Cole, considers her boss tainted by his past and his present, and is far from pleased to find herself reporting to him again, creating dynamic tension throughout the series.
Sharon Small, who plays Det Sgt Cole, is no stranger to police dramas. She portrayed DS Barbara Havers in the BBC’s The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and is also known for her lead roles in Murderland, Mistresses, and Law & Order: UK.
“I think as a viewer you want to be engaged with the piece that you are watching and crime drama allows you to take the audience on a journey because they’re discovering it as you’re discovering it – hopefully you’re slightly ahead of them.
“You’re dead in the water if you’re behind because then they’ve got it before you have. Hopefully, if you take that journey and you measure it right, then you’re discovering it together, and the audience are coming with you. And that should be the fun of it because everyone likes to work things out, everyone likes a puzzle, they like a ‘Who done it?’ ‘Why done it?’.”
Like Speer, she has enjoyed the ‘live’ approach. Before filming even began, she said, “It’s going to have a different feel ... we’re definitely going to be going very fast and have a slightly documentary feel to it. Filming can be quite a slow process.
“This way, hopefully, we should be doing it in three takes and be just capturing all of the nuance and there’s a little bit of liberty with the script which I’m looking forward to – except swearing, not swearing.”