LAMB SEASON

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28180, 19 January 1957, Page 10

LAMB SEASON

Canterbury In Top Place Estimates for the 1956 lambing season issued by the Department of Agriculture show that more lambs were produced in the Canterbury land district than in any other district in the country. The district’s lamb crop is estimated at 4,725,030. The only other district to exceed 4.000,000 lambs was Wellington with 4,442.067, but the northern district had more breeding ewes than Canterbury—--4,870,800 compared with 4,776.200. The highest lambing percentage for the season was in Southland. It was 106.94 per cent. Westland, with an estimated 89,986 lambs, was next with 103.92, followed by Otago 99.06 and Canterbury 98.93. Among counties Ashburton was second to Southland in total number of lambs. Southland had an estimated 2,747,200 lambs with Ashburton at 1,999,948. Southland county also had the highest lambing percentage of any county. Its average was 108.8. Rangiora and Ashburton were, however, not far behind with 107.1 and 106.7 respectively. The total lamb crop for the country as a whole was 25.383,700, an increase of 559.803 on the previous season. Outbreaks of facial eczema in the North Island and summer and autumn droughts in the South Island set back the over-all lambing percentages slightly—at 94.28 per cent, it was 0.52 per cent, behind 1955 —but this was more than offset by an increase of more than 700,000 in breeding ewe numbers to the record figure of 26,923,200.