The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1892. Sheep Returns

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 53, 22 October 1892, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1892. Sheep Returns

The annual sheep returns for the year ended 30th April, 1892, are to hand, and from them we glean the following interesting particulars : — The previous year the number was 16,753,752 ; and in 1892 18,570,752 (an increase of 1,823,661), from which has to be deducted 6661 decrease in four districts in the Auckland Province. In the Wellington-West Coast district the total was 3,472,462, of which 1,787,168 were breeding ewes. Rangitikei had a total of 449,387, Oroua 494,039, and Manawatu 220,61 1. Of breeding ewes, Rangitikei had 237,520, Oroua 259,---500, and Manawatu 108,414. In the Oroua County there were: 363 owners owning under 500 sheep, 134 owners owning under 1000 sheep, 73 owners owning under 2000 sheep, 38 owners owning under 5000 sheep, 8 owners owning under 10,000 she^p, 2 owners owning under 20,000 sheep, and 1 owner owning over 20,000 sheep — 619 owners with a total, as before mentioned, of 494,039. The large number of the small owners is indicative of the cause of the gratifying prosperity of this part of the colony. In 1891 the number of sheep in the Oroua County was 374,398, which shows that the year's increase was 119,641 — a very satisfactory advance in the material wealth of the settlers. As the land is still being cleared of bush, fenced, grassed, and otherwise prepared to carry stock at the same rapid rate which has characterised it for the past five or six years, it is safe to expect that next year's returns will show a still greater proportionate increase in the number of sheep. Land which is now capable of feeding — say, only three sheep to the acre — will be able to feed an average of three and a half, or even four, with the prudent system of paddocking and supplying winter feed, which is now being so generally adopted by the fanners. This in itself will do much to swell the returns, even if the newly-cleared land was left out of consideration altogether. Of course many farmers are looking to cattle just now, in consequence of the advanced prices ruling, and the prospects of dairy-farming being profitable by the establishment of butter factories. Where the two kinds of farming are united by one owner the results are certain so far, but where sheep-owners sell their flocks and replace them with only cattle, there is a strong probability that they may fall into the same error that many of the dairy farmers did, who, not so many years ago, parted with their cows, the management of which they understood, and went into sheep-farming, of which their knowledge and experience was of the slightest. There is a good deal of fashion in these things, and people are fond of a change, which they often make without considering all the possible contingences.