Lambing Not Badly Hit

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31162, 12 September 1966, Page 1

Lambing Not Badly Hit

Farmers from Waiau, in the north, to Springburn in the southern part of Mid-Canterbury said last evening that the wintry storm at the week-end did not last long enough seriously to affect the lambing.

With the bad storm of two weeks ago fresh in their minds, farmers in many areas were busy on Friday getting their sheep into shelter. A farmer in the Hororata district said that all ewes that had lambed on Friday and their lambs had been put into a shed for the night. As the weather cleared by about 10 p.m. this precaution had probably not been necessary. In the Springburn district another farmer took advantage of good gorse fences to shelter his stock. A farmer in one of the Banks Peninsula 'bays said that it had been extremely cold and there had been a vicious wind and hail on Friday night and early on Saturday. The showers had been too spasmodic to have a lasting effect and by the middle of Saturday his sheep were out grazing normally again. A Mid-Canterbury farmer said that the earlier storm had been harder on ewes than had at first been expected and since the storm he had lost about 12 of his older ewes, which had lambed during the storm, from either milk fever or general weakness. A Waiau farmer said that many in the district had in-

creased their flocks this year by about 300 ewes. Because of the storm they would be in the position of having lost all of the extra lambs they might have expected to gain from these ewes. In this and other areas the continuing cold weather is retarding spring growth.