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Home / New Zealand

Shortages spark sheep death fears

Wairarapa Times-Age
15 Jul, 2007 05:00 PM4 mins to read

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WAIRARAPA sheep farmers could be looking into the face of a massive stock epidemic, a Federated Farmers delegate has warned.
Meat and Fibre section delegate Alan Stuart, who farms at Mauriceville said yesterday the stock food shortage has become critical and this could spark the sleepy sickness epidemic.
"Feed levels are at
rock bottom.
"You can't get grazing, or hay anywhere," he said.
Mr Stuart said to make matters worse there had been a 25 per cent hike in nitrogen fertilizer costs, so " even if you could get it on you are paying a lot more."
"Urea is now close to $600 a tonne."
So far there have only been scattered reports of ewes dying but lambing in earnest is yet to begin.
Mr Stuart said farmers were battling on all fronts, due in large part to the high dollar.
The government he said was skirting around the problem trying, unsuccessfully, to force down house prices.
Meanwhile the export sector was being "absolutely stuffed."
'One of our major commodities is wool and this continues to languish."
He said consumer preference worldwide was stacked up against wool largely because of marketing.
"The promotion of our wool has been non-existent for the last seven years, we have been actively told not to promote our coarse wools.
"The result is that prices have dropped dramatically.
"Our exporters are screaming out for help on wool product promotion."
Mr Stuart said a wool industry network has now been set up with the belated aim to improve the marketing of coarse wools.
What is needed is a "fair and flat playing field" with the currency situation being dictated by the markets and not by Wellington bureaucrats.
Wairarapa Federated Farmers president Anders Crofoot said farmers had taken drastic measures to try and mitigate the effects of the drought.
They had not put rams over their hoggets in an effort to curtail demands on feed and scanning results showed that this season's lambing would be well down on previous years.
Although this took care of immediate problems it also meant that when things improved stock numbers were low and took a long time to recover.
Mr Crofoot warned that some of the hardest months were still ahead of farmers.
"We have the moisture too late.
"Now there are frosts and the grass is not lifting.
"We could get a boom in grass growth in spring, and have no stock to eat it."
Federated Farmers, he said, held regular meetings in attempts to keep closely in touch with each other's problems.
"We are keeping an eye out for everyone, including lifestyle block owners some of whom have a lot of enthusiasm but not much expertise when it comes to dealing with this sort of thing."
Mr Crofoot said he had just completed next year's budgets for Castlepoint Station & "they are horrendous."
He said desperate sheep and beef farmers were now looking to new feed supplements.
"They are just starting to buy in palm kernel.
"The dairy farmers have been feeding palm kernel for quite a while, but not the sheep and beef boys."
Kernel was imported from the Pacific basin and brought into New Plymouth.
Mr Crofoot said it needed careful handling.
"If it gets mouldy and is fed out it can cause problems."
"It's a fairly specialist feed, it is high in protein and relatively cheap but it is not easy to handle."
Early results were that weight gain in ewes was good but a further drawback was palm kernel could only be bought in bulk.
"You have to get it by the truckload which is sometimes more than sheep farmers want but perhaps farmers could get their heads together and split the loads."
Nitrate poisoning that has been laying low dairy cows in Taranaki has not posed a problem in Wairarapa where suppressed grass growth is more the order of the day than on the lush west coast of the North Island.
But with the lack of sunshine and dull days it could still threaten some areas of the district with higher rainfall and where grass growth has been a bit kinder than in severe drought areas.

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