Lamb numbers down

Press, 29 January 1982, Page 14

Lamb numbers down

There were an estimated 10.28 million lambs born in the central South Island statistical district during the 1981 lambing season according to the Department of Statistics.

This figure is a slight drop on the 10.67 million lambs born in the Canterbury, West Coast and Chatham Islands region during the 1980 year.

The central South Island statistical'district for lambing figures includes the Buller, Inangahua, Amuri and Cheviot counties as the northern boundary and the Waitaki and Westland counties as the southern boundary and it includes all counties in between, as well as the Chatham Islands.

The Department of Statistics released figures last week showing that 48.99 million lambs had been tailed or were to be tailed in New Zealand during the 1981-82 lamb rearing season.

This is a drop of over one million from the previous year’s total of 50.11 million. Of these 48.99 million lambs some 25.3 million, or 51.5 per cent are in the South Island. The other areas of the South Island for which figures were released pre the northern area, Marlborough, Kaikoura, Waimea and Golden Bay counties, 1.53 million (last season 1.48 million) and the southern area, which includes the remainder of the South Island counties, 13.43 million (last season 13.31 million). The lambing total is the first released for this season and according to the Department of Statistics these estimates are keenly sought by the freezing works and those interested in the numbers of potential flock sreplacement lambs. The estimates are produced by the Ministry of

Agriculture and Fisheries and the Department of Statistics and are based on a randomly selected sample of approximately 2500 farm holdings. “The size of the, sample is insufficient to .provide statistics to acceptable; accuracy for individual counties,” says the department. “The estimates for the designated regions are subject to possible sampling errors. The actual value of the total number of lambs tailed per region will almost (that is, with 95 per cent confidence) lie within the range defined by the estimated figure plus or minus the sampling error.” For the central South Island region the estimate then becomes 10.28 million plus or minus 250,000, for the South Island as a whole the estimate is 25.23 million plus or minus 380,000 and for New • Zealand the estimate is 48.99 : million plus or minus 590,000.