Miniature Lawn Mowers

Winemaker Peter Yealands hopes to avoid having to use his tractor to mow the grass around his 10,000 hectare vineyard, so he’s looking to the miniature sheep babydoll to do the job, potentially saving himself 60 per cent of his energy costs. Last year Yealands experimented by letting loose giant guinea pigs. That worked initially, he said. “But once the hawks had a taste for them they were sitting prey. We were losing them by the hour. Besides, we would have needed 11 million of them to make it work.” There are only 300 babydoll sheep in the world and they were originally bred as cute miniature pets, but Yealands believes that babydolls could help him to reduce the environmental footprint of his wine.