WILD DOGS KILL SHEEP.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1712, 31 December 1919, Page 5

WILD DOGS KILL SHEEP.

HEAVY AUSTRALIAN LOSSES. FARMERS SEEK ASSISTANCE. The Australian city man, surrounded by all the amenities that make life worth living, knows little and sometimes cares less of the trials of the man outback, whose life, far from being a perpetual delight, is something of a nightmare, what with drought or some other pestilence. Wild dogs, sneaking like ghostly figures among the flocks, are causing immense losses west of the Darling. ' \ j It was a terrible picture that a deputation to the Minister of Lands the other day drew of the depredations ot the wild dog. Through drought and dogs this year they had lost 100,000 sheep; of these losses 50 per cent, were ! due to th*j dogs. Apart from these losses, it is a costly business to get rid of the wild dogs. In some instances they have had to pay £5 per scalp. The dogs, according to the deputation, are making it impossible for sheep, to be run on the lands affected. The prospect for the small man seems to be about as black as Erebus; be can only abandon his holding if the dogs got pill sway. The larger man has a chance of giving the affected land over to cattle. The land owners have spent about £20,000 in building several hundred miles of dogproof fences and in keeping them in repair. The deputation asked the Giovernment to build 150 miles of new fence within the State and repair 180 miles ot partially dogproof fence, at- 1 an estimated cost of £50,000. Tliis new fence and other assistance the Minister promised. All that the land owners are asked to do is to cope with the dogs inside the fence. Even this is an expensive job, for, to take onlv one set of figures quoted, they had to pay £1329 for 425 dogs that were killed.