HEAVY HORSES

Southland Times, Issue 23287, 25 August 1937, Page 6

HEAVY HORSES

LITTLE AUSTRALIAN INQUIRY GOOD DAYS THOUGHT TO BE OVER (Special to The Times) DUNEDIN, August 24. That New Zealand exporters of heavy horses can expect little inquiry from the Commonwealth for some time to come is the opinion of Mr Andrew Carruthers, the Middlemarch Clydesdale breeder who has just returned from a visit to Australia. Discussing the matter with a reporter today Mr Carruthers said that the good days of a keen Australian demand and high prices for breeding stock were definitely past. It was possible that the trade might develop again in a year or two, but in the meantime Australian farmers were not greatly interested. The shortage of good active farm workers which had created the unusual inquiry of the past year or two had now been made up and in any case he had gained the impression that the average farmer in Australia at the present time did not have much money for the importation of Clydesdales. During his visit Mr Carruthers encountered a good deal of Clydesdale stock exported from New Zealand, including horses of his own breeding, and he stated that Dominion-bred animals compared more than favourably with horses raised in the Commonwealth. The weather conditions had had a disastrous effect in the wheat belt, he continued, and the outlook for a heavy harvest in Australia this year was not bright. On one property visited by Mr Carruthers on Darling Downs there were 10,000 acres sown in wheat and some of it was - just showing through the ground. A good deal had hardly struck at all and there was one area which was coming into ear at about eight to 10 inches high. The grower expected less than half a crop when it was harvested compared with the average yield over almost the same acreage last season of 54 bushels to the acre. . Mr Carruthers was told that m this district there had been no rain to speak of since 1935. All classes of farming, he said, were expected to be seriously handicapped by the drought. Dairy cattle were in very poor heart and there was a grave shortage of feed of any kind. Sheep, too, had suffered, and it was not expected that the wool clip for the present year would reach last year’s figure. A great deal of wheat had had to be fed off to sheep and this fact, together with the probability of a seriously reduced harvest, could not fail to have a marked effect on the arable year.