“Grave Effect Of Quotas On Export Lamb Kill”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29270, 30 July 1960, Page 12

“Grave Effect Of Quotas On Export Lamb Kill”

“It does seem criminal that in an agricultural country most concerned with reducing costs of production we should find serious v loss of income because of quotas fixed by unions z*n freezing works able to handle more lambs during the peak of the season and men willing to kill them.” sam Mr Peter Falconer, advisory officer to the Lauriston Farm Improvement Club, at the annual meeting of the club this week. On the lighter and drier farms - and particularly where white - elover seed might be harvested, Mr Falconer said that the lack of sufficient killing space at the ' freezing works had meant serious , loss. This had not been helped by a strike in one of the local works at a most critical time of the season. Many farmers had been forced to keen lambs, which were ready to kill, on failing feed supplies. Milk lambs took at least twice as long to gain as lose weight and a check in the feed supply of milking ewfstn Npvember usually meant the beginning of weaning. Feed Supply On light land it was imperative to draft lambs as soon as they were ready, particularly in

a dry season, and failure to do this for rather, to be able to do it) when the feed supply could virtually disappear in three days of north-westerly winds could mean a check for fat lambs and fattening lambs, a low proportion fat off the mothers and subsequent late fattening and encroachment on the following year’s feed supply ' Mr Falconer recalled that '-ne farmer, after arranging space, railed 400 milk lambs to a works 60 miles away, only to have them returned two days later when thev were declared “black ” , Many others had had to feed off white clover crops or hay areas because they could not sell their fat lambs when they were ready for sale. Mr Falconer said that he would suggest that this difficulty in drafting lambs was one of the greatest limiting factors in light land farming today, particularly where it might be nosrihle to take a white clover seed crop. It was up to organisations like the club and farmers, through Federated Farmers, to make known that these difficulties were a very real cause of loss to the farming industry in Canterbury. . * I