The article was most definitely not written by a New Zealander. It would be a page 3 job at the most in the Zild. People aren't as obsessed with sheep in NZ as people outside NZ think they are ...

I know Bendigo Station (the farm where Shrek exists) quite well. It's one of the areas used in the Great Easter Bunny Hunt. In winter there would be very little food (tucker) available to him, and he would be competing with a lot of ravenous rabbits for what little there is. He would have had to eat tussock shoots (not the best) and matagouri leaves (more usually eaten by goats). He would have been able to find grass on sunnier slopes during the winter, but not much. He's probably as thin as a rake underneath all that wool!