HYDATIDS CONTROL

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31317, 13 March 1967, Page 19

HYDATIDS CONTROL

Committee Is Concerned

The Banks Peninsula Hydatids Committee is concerned about the failure of some farmers to control their dogs. The committee chairman (Mr W. S. L. Mcßae) told the Wairewa County Council that control of dogs was essential if the area was to maintain its first-class record in hydatids control.

The programme adopted by the committee had not only given the area the second best record in New Zealand but had enabled the committee to decrease the number of dog dosings from three to two a year.

“In most cases we get cooperation,” Mr Mcßae said, “But some owners are coming up with infections time after time.”

Mr Mcßae said the infections came from dogs eating offal which they took from dead sheep while wandering at large.

He said the proper disposal of offal and the control of dogs could help to prevent infection.

The council agreed to join the plan to use coloured dog collars next year as a means of establishing quickly where dogs came from and whether they were registered. Registration fees were fixed as follows:

For each dog owned by a shepherd, drover or farmer and kept solely for herding or driving sheep and cattle and for each dog owned by a rabbit board, rabbiter or opossum hunter employed by a board and kept solely for destroying rabbits or opossums, 3s 6d. For any other dog, £l.