The Golden Fleece Is Still Our National Wealth

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 65, 9 December 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

The Golden Fleece Is Still Our National Wealth

Intensive Methods In Modern Sheep Farming

SHEARING time on a mountain station. Woolly sheep trotting, complaining, across the homestead flat, with lively collies yapping at their , heels, shepherds shouting from the saddles of , o'lean ponies, white dust drifting in cloud on the sunlit A,,,air. Penners-up hustling the mobs into the hot tin v ..'Shed. .. Inside, along the board, the busy shearers mak,',l ,iiig play, bright blades flashing, machine humming, stripping the creamy fleeces off at the rate of 200 a day each man. Station ewes, naked and gaunt, tumbling down the runways into the counting pens. Ragged fleeces tossed into the lofty wool-press, packed down, stitched up, branded and turned out —a new bale added to an ever-growing pile. That is the finest sight you will see in all New Zealand, and the scene; most typical of the Dominion—harvesting the golden fleece of the ■ nation’s wealth. For New Zealand is most famous as a sheep country. ~ , Thirty million sheep graze on the country’s hill- , sides. Their meat and wool and hides are worth j £25, 000,000 yearly to the country. There is £200,000,- /' 000 capital invested in this rich industry. Only dairy- ' farming can compare with it in magnitude, having in the last few years supplanted sheep-farming as the .country’s dominant branch of primary production. New Zealand sends Home annually 12,000,000 carcases of mutton and lamb, for which she is paid 000,000. Exports of sheepskins bring in £ 1,500,000. Wool exports are worth a further £13,000,000. These are the main sources of revenue of the sheep industry. They reflect the tremendous growth of the industry in the course of 95 years. Romance Of Sheep The history of sheep-farming in the Dominion has been one. of constantly-increasing efficiency and intensification of methods. Captain James Cook introduced sheep to New Zealand 170 years ago; but sheep-farming properly began only when, in 1843, Sir Charles Clifford landed 600 sheep at Wellington by the brig Bee from Sydney, and established them on his Warekaka station by the Ruamahanga stream. In the years that followed sheepgrazing quickly grew to be the nation’s principal occupation, and the main source of New Zealand’s wealth. For many years sheep were ranged freely, being fed on the sparse grass of the high country in summer, and broght down on to the rich lowlands in winter. Thus the early farmers fed their flocks without the need of sowing a blade'of grass or a single turnip. As it was impossible in those days to export meat carcases without their decomposing, except in pickle, the sheepfarmer made his money out of wool. He crossed the hardy mountain Merino with the English Leicester, and so evolved a strain well-suited to his purposes. Later the land became more closely settled, and it was necessary for the farmer to supplement his feed, in many cases, with root and leaf crops. Then, too, in 1882, the New Zealand Land Company made an experiment which was to utterly change the farmer’s prospects. The sailing ship Dunedin was chartered, equipped with a crude refrigerator, and sent home to England round Cape Horn with a cargo of frozen meat. Actually, her first cargo never left the wharf. The freezer broke down; 1500 carcases had to be disposed of hurriedly in Dunedin. The sceptics scoffed. But on February 15 she sailed with 4311 mutton carcases. 598 fat lambs, 2200 sheep tongues, and some pork. She reached Home on May 18. After three months at sea, her cargo was found to be in excellent condition. On her tenth subsequent voyage, in 1890, she was lost at sea with her cargo and all hands. But the trade she had inaugurated grew. With the transition to meat-raising, and closer settlement, more economic breeds of sheep, of greater table merit, were bred. Lincoln, Romney, and Border Leicester were introduced on the low-country farms. More intensive farming was studied, (but it was not until comparatively recently, when the demand for fat lambs became the most salient feature of overseas demand, that sheep production attained maximum efficiency. To satisfy the demand for a high-quality lamb, the specialised Southdown was introduced. Canterbury farmers, famous as fat-lamb breeders, learnt to carry

on small acreage large flocks of breeding ewes, ekcing out the shortage of grass in winter and spring with rootcrops and chaff and meatmeal preparations. Thev lamb a high percentage of 115 to 120. The lambs arc weaned on to the spring grass, rape and kale, and are intensely fattened to a weight of 351 b.. at which thev sell best. By autumn all are sold, and the work of laving down next season’s crops is occupying the farmer. As shearing, ploughing and sowing, are contracted out in most cases, these farmers are able to maintain extremely small staffs —often just the farmer himself and a paid hand taken on over the lambing, dipping, and shearing periods. In the North Island supplies of grass never fail, and a different method of farming is feasible. Here, in the late winter, the farmer purchases a flock of breeding ewes which have already been put to the ram, and in numbers that greatly exceed the normal carrying power of the farm, lhey are turned on to the new grass, and as soon as they have lambed are turned out on to special pastures. When the lambs have been weaned, the ewes are fattened as stores and sold. The lambs are milkfattened up to weaning, and finished on grass. As soon as, in the autumn, the farm is clear of stock again, the pastures are top-dressed and permitted to recuperate before the next season. Such are the intensively-managed meat and fatlamb farms, where the wool clip is of secondare importance. They carry about five sheep to the acre, and are usually of small extent. The Sheep Men The sheep industry has developed, particularly in the back country, a fine type of man. hardy and selfreliant. The shepherds on the grazing runs often ride and tramp over large areas of country, and arc active and athletic hill-men. Moreover, the professional musterer and the professional shearer have brought into existence new professions dependent entirely on the sheep industry. Gangs travel from station to’ station during the season, and take full command of the shearing-shed and its operations, the regular hands merely filling the pens. Many of these men shear all the year round, going overseas to Australia, and even America, in the off season.

Machine shearing has ousted the old-fashioned blades, although many farmers believe the older method the best for the sheep—clipped too closely by machine. However, a good machine shearer can do nearly half again as many sheep in the day as the blade expert, only the very best of whom could manage 200 lightwoolled sheep. The indispensable adjunct of the shepherd is his dog, and New Zealand collies show an intelligence and degree of training almost unbelievable to the stranger. Dog trials are popular contests in country districts, and give a remarkable glimpse of the sagacity of the dog and his comprehension of the least sound or gesture from the man.

The main wool output comes from the backcountry runs, where flocks bred purely for their wool are carried upon often barren country, with only a few

acres of arable land to carry the stock over the bitter winters. Here the old grazing principles still prove the most successful, and lambing percentages are low. and the meat output is small. The Merino and English Leicester breed has stood the test well in this kind of country. Larger staffs are necessary to farm this tvpc of country, and mustering the sheep off the high country with the approach of winter is an expensive and difficult task'. Many of these stations in the South Island consist of 40.000 to 100.000 acres, and include mountain country running up to 9000 feet above sealevel. The hill stations, where general sheep-farming is carried out, are really the mainstay of the industrv. From them the lowlands farmers obtain their ewes for intensive breeding and fattening. Many have evolved extremely high-standard stud flocks, and ewes obtained from them can be relied upon to be of sound stock. Lambing Figures Lambing percentages throughout the Dominion average about 85 to 88 per cent. Canterbury and Kaikoura average 90 per cent. Actually, small areas of the Canterbury Plains would average very much higher in good years, but the percentage is reduced by the low figures from the mountain country, where often 70 per cent, is the most that can be hoped for. On these bigestates it is impossible to devote the individual attention to ewes and new-born lambs possible on the small farms of the plains. Instead of being able to take in and hand-feed lambs dying of cold and exposure, the most the hill farmer can do is have a shepherd rideround the flock daily to pick up the cast ewes and rescuestray or abandoned lambs. Often it is not possible to do even this much. The average value to the sheep-farmer of a breeding ewe is 18/- to 35/- per year, in products, in addition to her own value of £l. She may produce twin lambs, which will be worth 30/- each, as well as 10/worth of wool; so that her maximum productive power is about £3/10/- a year. If all ewes could achieve this, and be sold at £1 before they passed their prime, the lot of the sheep-farmer would be a happv one.

The average size of flock of sheep-farmers throughout the Dominion is about 1000 sheep. As, however, the average is greatly reduced by the many mixed farms which carry small flocks, the flocks of most of the successful sheepmen are about 3000 to 4000. It is on flocks of about that size that the wealth of the industry relies, for, with smaller numbers, it is hard to attain maximum efficiency, and with larger flocks it is hard to devote sufficient care to the breeding ewes at lambing time. New Zealand has 30,000 sheep-farmers in various parts of the country, mainly in the South Island. Perhaps no single group of men contributes more per head to the wealth of the country. The numbers of dairymen are, today, greater, but their output is not proportionately magnified. In the past, sheep-farming was the foundation of New Zealand’s greatness, and, if today it takes second place, it is still, nonetheless, an industry of vital national importance.