Yes, There Are More Sheep Than People in New Zealand. A Lot More.

I wrote this in 2016 or 2017 during the two years I lived in New Zealand. Some details — prices, hours, what’s open — may have changed, but the experience and my love for this place haven’t.

No writing about New Zealand would be complete without a mention of sheep. Before I came here, every time someone heard about my upcoming move they would immediately start talking about sheep. It took a while before I caught on to the trend and realized it wasn’t just a coincidence.

And here’s the thing — they’re not wrong. When I moved here in 2015, there were roughly 29 million sheep in New Zealand and about 4.5 million people. That’s nearly seven sheep for every single person. The sheep population actually peaked in 1982 at a staggering 70 million — that was 22 sheep per person. Even with numbers declining since then, sheep still outnumber people by a wide margin, and New Zealand remains one of the only countries in the world where that’s true.

Sheep are as much a part of New Zealand as green grass and rolling hills. There’s plenty of dairy here too so you see a lot of cows, but sheep are everywhere — North, South, East, West, wherever you go there they are. Driving through the country and seeing sheep has become part of life now and I find it almost therapeutic to watch them quietly grazing along the way.

We drove from Auckland to Wellington and back a few weeks ago and I was so excited to see pregnant sheep everywhere because that means lambing season is coming soon! New Zealand is the world’s largest exporter of lamb, with around 24 million finished lambs recorded every year — so those woolly bumps on the hillside are kind of a big deal economically.

Some people see lambs and think of tasty dinners to come — and in New Zealand that’s not just about roast lamb. I, on the other hand, prefer to watch the lambs chase each other around the paddocks. Having that many babies at once is just adorable.

I said I’d try to get some pictures once they arrive — and I did! Check out It’s Lambing Season in New Zealand. The Paddocks Are Chaos. I Love It. for the follow-up. But in the meantime, today’s pic is of one of the hillsides on the drive back to Auckland from Wellington. The white dots are all sheep!