I did some research about a popular statement regarding the ratio of sheep to people in NZ

This is an article I found:

Myth: New Zealand has 3 million people and 60 million sheep

New Zealand has 3 million people and 60 million sheep

This is a commonly heard statement about New Zealand, frequently in anticipation of yet another sheep joke.

This is not a myth: its just that the information is now out of date

First the question of how many people live in New Zealand: the population passed the 4 million mark some time in 2003. In fact, the population clock put the event precisely at 5.30 pm on Thursday 24 April 2003. By 31 March, 2007, the estimated resident population reached 4.18 million people.

But do we know how many sheep live here? The figure of 60 million is one that is still heard. How accurate is this number? Is there still a ratio of 20 sheep to every person living here? And if not, what is the sheep-person ratio?

According to the latest Agricultural Production statistics, released by Statistics New Zealand's Agricultural Production team, there were 40.1 million estimated resident sheep at 30 June 2006, which means that the sheep-person ratio has halved in the last 20 years, and now stands at 10 sheep per person.

However, to put this in an international context, New Zealand's ratio is still twice as high as Australia's, which is currently less than five sheep per person. As with New Zealand, this is due to declining sheep numbers and a growing human population. ............................

PS I will have to find some sheep jokes to put on my blog...... Nah some of them are a bit rude!

The above pics show some of our pet lambs we had - lambs were often orphaned and we would had raise them feeding them with a bottle and teat. They made wonderful loving pets.