Ulaanbaatar
Mongolian shepherd to compete in 2017 World Woolhandling Championships
PoliticsUlaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ An ordinary shepherd from the pristine steppe of Mongolia is representing his country at the 2017 World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships to be held in South Island of New Zealand on February 8-11.
His name is Enkhnasan (Nasa) Chuluunbaatar. Nasa comes from a nomadic herding background in Bulgan province.
Nasa’s participant profile reads:
“His family's herd consists of several hundred sheep and goats, along with their horses and cattle. Most herders would have at least a couple of hundred sheep, and generally each herder and their extended family will shear their own sheep.
They use large scissors (not blades) to shear the sheep, usually tying their legs together and doing first one side then the other, outside on bare ground.
The sheep in Mongolia are fat-tailed and generally have coarse or semi-coarse wool. There are quite a number of different breeds (the most common is called Khalkha), but all variations of a type most similar to Awassi here in NZ. Wool is of little value and colours (they are often multi-coloured) or parts of the fleece are not separated after shearing.
Nasa moved to New Zealand in 2012 to live in Golden Bay, the hometown of his Kiwi wife. That year, he learnt to machine shear here in NZ and since then, has been shearing in his local area.
Nasa and Zoe have two sons, Tushinbayar (4) and Temulen (2). They will be moving back to Mongolia in the near future and Nasa plans to put the machine shearing skills he has learnt here to good use in his home country.
His experience of competition shearing is limited to shows in the South Island, having moved into the Senior grade this season.
Nasa's interests include wrestling and horse racing, the major national sports in Mongolia. His father has bred and trained some very successful horses in their area. In New Zealand, he has been introduced to seafood and enjoys fishing”.
The team manager at the World Shearing Championships Zoe Leetch wrote that the team could not locate another Mongolian shearer or woodhandler “at competition level anywhere”.
