CATTLE TICK COMING.

Waipa Post, Volume XIX, Issue 1088, 7 May 1921, Page 5

CATTLE TICK COMING.

DEPARTMENT TOO EASY. Correspondence from the provincial secretary was read to the Te Awamutu Farmers' Union yesterday respecting cattle tick. It stated that the Agricultural Department could not fix the isolation 'boundaries until it had investigated the areas further, .Every person, however, finding tick \vas hound to notify the Department, and was ■forbidden to remove infected stock. It seemed likely that 'Cook's Strait would be the boundary, 'leaving the who'le of the North Island de- __ clared infected. Tick had been found at Cambridge and Matamata. A member: Oh, murder! (Laughter.)

Mr Quin: It looks as if it is closing in toward Te Awamutu.

Mr McGhie: That is what I think. There seems no hope of getting Te Awamutu isolated.

The secretary said this brought up the whole question of the adequacy of the Department's measures to prevent the spread of the pest.

Mr Quin said he believed dipping was a cure.

Mr McGhie said it would be expensive to have to erect cattle dips everywhere all at once.

Mr Budden: From what I hear, any dairy farmer who gets tick in his herd is going to become a poor man.

Mr McGhie said hard frost seemed to kill the tilck. He had been told that the pest sometimes hung so thick that a beast's ears often drooped down with the weight. Mr Mandeno said in South Africa they were thick on some cattle's bellies —big things like bees —yet there were -hard frosts in the Transvaal. . Mr McGhie: It seems that the rabbit pest is nothing in comparison with the cattle tick. Another speaker remarked that a to Id him he saw tick on the Hauraki Plains two months ago.

It was resolved unanimously, on the motion of Messrs Quin and Budden, to urge that the Agricultural Department's regulations should be very strictly enforced.