With the national sheep flock reduced to 34 million (half the number of 50 years ago) due to a continuing decline in wool income and the growth of dairy farming, there's a big question mark hanging over the future of sheep.
Farmers are experimenting with ways to eliminate the workload associated with wool and focuse on the meat.
Sheep that naturally shed their wool are increasingly sought after. There are now 60 registered studs of the self-shedding breeds, which include the Dorper, Dorset Horn, Wiltshire Horn, Damara and Meatmaster.
Hill country farming needs a sheep and cattle mix for weed, pasture and parasite control. In a farming region as diverse as Taranaki, sheep farming traditions have been abandoned as farmers try new strategies.
John Earney, who breeds self- shedding Wiltshires at Huiroa, says his Avonstour Farm ram sales are doubling every year.
He sells stud rams for $1000 to $1200 and flock rams for $350 (this is much more than most conventional ram breeders are charging these day).
These sheep lose their belly and crutch wool after the first two crosses and don't need shearing at all after the third cross.
They will lamb twice a year and require little drenching for worm control.
Last year, it cost Mr Earney $400 to have all his rare and unusual sheep breeds shorn; he paid $90 for woolpacks, sent the wool off and got a cheque back for $450.
"How can there be any future in that? If I wasn't into these unusual breeds, I'd have the additional costs of dagging, drenching, flystrike and footrot treatment as well. I'm a regular at the Stratford sale and I have not heard any farmer say there's a future in wool."
His advice to sheep farmers curious about any of the shedding breeds: "Mate them with some of your average ewes and keep them near the house. See what happens. Measure them against your main flock."
Hard-working Mr Earney and his partner, Ruth Healey, manage 1200 stock units on their 69ha (170 acres).
"You show me another couple who are making as good a living off a similar-sized area," he says.
Traditional Romney and Perendale farmers are among his ram buyers and last year he sold 30 rams to buyers in the South Island; these were not all lifestyle blockers, he insists. Some will be farmers who want to start their own studs.
Mark Ogle, of Te Popo, a Romney farmer who switched to Perendales, began buying rams from Avonstour three years ago. He was heading seriously into a fully self-shedding flock when he made a major change in policy and decided to quit ewes completely and just fatten bought-in store lambs.
Ad Feedback "If I'd stayed with breeding ewes, it would have been the Wiltshires," he says. "They were everything I'd been told: no dagging, no footrot, no belly fleece, little drenching. There was no downside."
The decision to cross with self- shedders wasn't difficult, "because it was costing me $1.70 to shear a sheep, plus associated costs, and that was more than the value of a kilo of wool. I think it's the way of the future.
"If wool suddenly has value again, you can easily swap back."
Russell Gibbs, of Tongaporutu, has mated his 650 Perendales with Wiltshires and now all are half or three-quarter breds.
"It's been a good decision. The only regret is I didn't do it sooner.
"The lambing is up from 120 to 139 per cent and the workload has gone down, with no crutching or dagging, and no flystrike. I give them all one drench at weaning and that's that. The lambs still sell well. They are not smaller, although that depends on the rams you use.
"I still have to shear the half breds and I probably dagged 30 to 40 of the worst hoggets, but last year I used fully shedding rams for the first time. The shedding will improve as we get more Wiltshire into them.
"People don't fully account for the whole cost of farming sheep when they look at the wool return. Instead of growing wool, I am growing constitution, weight and lambing percentage. The alternative was to reduce sheep numbers.
"I know Romney farmers who have reduced because they are sick of dagging and they can't get the dagging labour."
Everyone in the business says you can't farm cattle without sheep in the hill country, but John Corlett, of Te Wera, has been doing it for 10 years on his 101ha (250 acres).
He bought the farm as a going concern with 300 sheep, having paid cash from selling his Midhirst farmlet.
"I got the numbers up to over 900 with silage supplements, but I could not get them to perform. I could not get a good lambing percentage consistently and for the work required, the return from sheep just wasn't worth it. So I gradually sold them and then sold the shearing plant and hydraulic wool press. I finished with them completely.
"I gradually moved into Hereford and Angus cows. I had 1500 stock units last winter. I graze off in summer and make hay and silage.
"The farm is the cleanest it's ever been, with virtually no carpet fern or thistles. But I've done a lot of knapsack spraying. I had a major thistle problem - the Tarata thistle was the worst - but I've just about wiped out that and the Californians.
"Other people thought I was mad. They told me I'd be overrun with weeds, but it was like that when I had sheep.
"I've been saying for years the only good sheep are the ones with mint sauce poured over them. I miss nothing about sheep, particularly the flystrike."
His neighbour Kevin O'Brien has changed his policy over 10 years and now farms only half the sheep numbers he used to. The ratio is about three cattle to one sheep - it used to be the reverse.
He's also putting a terminal sire over bought-in, preferably younger ewes and fattening all the lambs. He moved away from breeding ewes because of the work requirement and poor wool returns.
"We still have to shear, but only when necessary, and we shear the lambs late. We are wintering 3500 sheep, but mostly they are hoggets; we just keep farming them until they are saleable on the winter schedule, using a down country fattening runoff and we sell no stores.
"The shearing cost me $1.87 per sheep the other day. You have to get 2 kilograms off a ewe to break even. It's a good sheep that will clip 2 kilos and it doesn't happen in this country.
"We could go back to the old Romney, but he's not hardy enough."
He doesn't see a future in wool and says what's happening here is what happened a decade ago in Europe.
"In Europe, they don't need the wool. They've got a massive meat trade. It's local and they haven't got the sea freight problem. They don't even bother to bale the wool. People just come and pay a few cents for it."
He observes that the textile industry is now tooled up for synthetics. Wool has its advantages, "but you'd have to give them the money and the wool to retool if there was ever a move back".
"The only thing that will save wool is if they find some other major industrial or household use, such as ceiling insulation or pipe lagging. Why isn't wool used in combination with some synthetic exterior substance that can be slapped on over it for lagging?"
Mr O'Brien says his concern is that sheep farmers are not getting enough of the meat dollar to compensate for the loss of wool income.
"In the supermarket the other day they had lamb leg steaks selling at $34 a kilogram and we're getting $3.50 a KG for our lambs. It costs $11 to process a whole sheep and the offal value will cover that. There's some waste, but we're still being ripped off.
"The meat-processing and -exporting companies are making taxable losses, but they're spending billions upgrading plants and buying out rivals and the farmers are paying for that. It's very easy to make a tax loss when you're spending up big, but it's not a real trading loss. We know that because when the stock numbers are not available, they will pay a lot more to get them. It's been going on for a long time."
Meanwhile, there are still people around who see the hard hill country as an opportunity for an isolated, desirable lifestyle, if not a worthwhile financial investment.
It doesn't get much rougher than Matau North Rd, where Northland fencer and engineer Steve Knudsen, 42, is in his third year coming to grips with the challenges of 1300ha (3200 acres) - of which about 607 is in grass - and carrying 3000 stock units.
He paid cash for the property, most of that coming from the highly successful hydraulic fencepost driver he designed and built, and the sale of some industrial land at Wellsford.
He calls it Vertigo Station and has given the paddocks names like China, Tibet and Mongolia.
"Since I was 10 years old, I wanted a big rough place down a no-exit road with a big chunk of bush. This was my dream.
"I realise it's foolish to farm sheep, that there's no money in them. The wool sales don't cover the shearing costs and on top of that, it's difficult cattle country. I'm in a no-win situation, I realise that.
"But I'm willing to face the reality because I don't have a mortgage. It's hopeless, but I still like doing it. It's me, this place. When I go up the valley, I feel so good.
"My fallback, if I need to, is I could start building post drivers again. I could do it here."
