Coopworth Sheep, Southland, New Zealand

So obviously, I've come to NZ to work on sheep. I'm here for a month to use some of the resources they have here to get some more data for my PhD on the evolution of horns.

I work on wild Soay sheep on St Kilda in Scotland. The kind of research I do is more looking at evolution in an unmanipulated population.

So today, I had my first insight into the world of actual sheep farming and animal breeding. My NZ boss asked if I wanted to accompany him on a tour around some farms in Southland, where he was chosing rams he wanted to breed from. It was strangely boring and fun... we drove about 400km across the country, surrounded by nothing but rolling hills and thousands of sheep and cattle.

It was interesting meeting farmers and seeing the sheep, but I really don't think that kind of research is for me. I can't help thinking of domestic sheep as grotesque white parodies of their wild counterparts.