Ewe Shortage Feared

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18632, 16 February 1935, Page 13

Ewe Shortage Feared

PJSBOKNT fanners may yet; reap the benefit of a ewe shortage which is feared in Marlborough as a result of Jive successive years of intensely dry conditions. The continuation of the dry seasons is steadily reducing the number of surplus ewes, ve.rv lew of which may be Jett, in Marlborough to be sent, to Canterbury this season. Kven it there were, their condition would be such that travelling thorn down to Canterbury would be out, ot: the question. Thousands of old ewes “went out last season, as the scanty feed available was required for the younger and more valuable sheep, and this intensified the attrition that was taking place. Marlborough and Nelson were replacing to some extent the J’oveify Buy ewes which used to be sent to Canterbury in very large _ numbers. The development of sheep farming m the Waikato is diverting these ewes to trial quarter,- and instead of the 120,000 that used to be shipped to the south only an odd draft or two comes to hand. . , , There is no definite estimate ot the number of ewes that go ycnil) A 1 Marlborough and Nelson, but it. has been variously calculated at from 00,000 to KO,OOO. It is a fair estimate that in the normal autumn a Marlborough ewe, worth 20s, loses quite half its value by the time it has been travelled over the bare roans to Canterbury. Here is an indirect loss that the railway would prevent but there is a further loss in C'o lamn production of these attenuated owes, instead of the 100 per cent, of lambs they would have produced on their homo farms or would produce m van terbury if they could be railed' down, the lamb crop would be nearer 00 per rent, and with a proportion ot tin capital cost of the ewes lost by mortality.