NEW SOUTH WALES FLOCKS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1926, Page 8

NEW SOUTH WALES FLOCKS

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, 2nd September. The Government Statistician has been doing a little shepherding, and has brought back into the fold a few million sheep that have been missing, at least statistically. He now finds that there are 47,100,000 sheep, in Now South Wales, which is at least 7,000,000 in excess of the number previously accepted by stockowners and pastoral authorities. As the stockowners will obviously bo disinclined to go out and try to count all the sheep for themselves, they will have to accept the Statistician's figures. The new figures, which have given the pastoralists a bit of a shock, raise, of course, the question as to how many sheep the State can safely carry. There is no difficulty at present because of a uniformly good reason, but if in the middle of summer the season turns out unusually dry there will be no little anxiety because of tho tremendous flocks which tho State is carrying. There is the promise of a big, and perhaps, record lambing. If the Statistician's new figures are correct —and it is difficult for anyone to dispute them —there may be a lambing this year of anything 'from eleven to fourteen millions. Allowing for slaughterings and deaths from natural causes, and taking the latest official figures as a basis, tho State should be running at the end of this year anything from fifty, five to fifty-eight million sheep. It might even go very close to sixty million.