Three wild rabbits managed to escape rising floodwaters in New Zealand by clambering aboard a flock of sheep and surfing to safety on their woolly backs.

Sixty-four-year-old Ferg Horne said he had been farming since he left school at age 15 and had never seen anything quite like it.

He was trudging through pelting rain to rescue a neighbour's sheep from the floodwaters on Saturday at their South Island farm near Dunedin when he spotted the bedraggled rabbits hitching a ride.