Local sheep kill nearly over

Press, 9 June 1978, Page 15

Local sheep kill nearly over

After all the pressure to have lambs and sheep killed earlier in the season, the killing season at Canterbury works for sheep is now coming to an end.

Local works have been killing some lambs and also sheep from Southland, where works are a long way behind with their kills because of industrial troubles. Canterbury Frozen Meat Company’s Pareora works below Timaru was due to close at the end of this week for quite extensive alterations between seasons. This works was down to two chains this week from three and two chains were also working at the threechain Fairfield works in Mid-Canterbury. Mr N. G. Cornelius, stock buying manager for the company, said that Fairfield would go on working as long as there was stock available to kill. Both Fairfield and Pareora have been handling Southland stock, which have included both lambs and sheep, but there have been no lambs now from the south for more than two weeks. Meantime C.F.M.’s Canterbury works at Belfast, down to one chain from five, is handling local Canterbury stock and will go on as long as stock are coming into the southern part of Canterbury from Southland. It has been at one chain level from this week. Mr Cornelius said that they had now pretty well caught up with the local kill of sheep and lambs, although there had been a slight upsurge this week, which would also be repeated next week. As far as cattle were

concerned he said that they were still killing to capacity at Belfast, and they could still see no end to the cattle kill. By June 3 the company’s cattle kill was just short of 100,000 at 99,593 compared with 97,127 at the same time last season. At the same time the lamb kill for three works was 3,181,828 compared with 3,104,001 last season and the sheep tally 799,931 compared with 779,106 a year ago.

Mr G. H. Steel, livestock manager of Waitaki NZ Refrigerating Ltd, also confirmed that the local sheep and lamb kill had virtually been completed, but as from next week he said that they would be starting to withhold some of their local stock so that they could assist Southland companies with some of their big backlog of stock. Waitaki’s Picton works closed last Friday and Nelson was due to close for sheep and lambs yesterday. As from the end of last week Islington, which has four chains, was down to

one chain but Mr Steel said that the company’s other works at Smithfield, Puke uri, Burnside and Finegand (Balclutha) had all of their chains working handling ewes and a percentage of lambs. Waitaki also has a big backlog of cattle to kill, with no sign of an end in sight. The company’s sheep and lamb kill in Canterbury up to last week-end was 1,961,916 head, which was 23,189 higher than at the same stage of last season. And up to May 27, for its seven works in the South Island, its kill was up on last season by 334,672.