FROM COWS TO SHEEP

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 26, 23 October 1937, Page 16

FROM COWS TO SHEEP

Dangerous Trend In Taranaki LABOUR SHORTAGE Due to the scarcity of labour, and in an endeavour to keep ragwort in check, some Taranaki back-country farmers are turning from combined. dairying, sheep running and raising of dry stock to fhe latter two branches of farming, while others, for the same reasons, „are drastically reducing their milking cattle and concentrating more on sheep. Specific examples quoted by a Taranaki correspondent show that this tendency has already reached proportions that may, if not checked, lead to a rapid decline in the amount of daiTy produce, particularly butter, produeed in the province. With the recovery in wool prices it would naturaliy be expected that there would be a tendency for settlers to reduce the size of their dairy herds to pre-slump level, and the effeet would uot have been very serious. But now the back-country settlers find . it so difficult to get labour to carry on dairying that they are not only reducing their output on cream from their farms, but are going out of dairyiug altogether. The problem of ragwort control also has a hearing, because sheep, if carefully rnanaged, will keep tho weed down with no harm to the sheep,* whereas the cattle cannot be xun on country badly infested with ragwort. With sufficient labour the settler could cut or spray the weed extensively at the proper time, and still be able .to graze milking cows. Unable to get men even if he could afford to pay the wages set down by legislation, the farmer has only one option and that is to concentrate on sheep. On some eastern district farms today milking stock ' is repxesented by one cow, kept to supply personal needs. Four settlers in the Makahu-_Puni-whakau district recently disposed . of their dairy herds and will run only sheep. On one road in the Matau district there is now not one farmer with a dairy herd. Previously all these men milked substantial herds and were responsible for an output acceptable to any factoiy. The result, it is felt, can only be a drastie reduction in dairy production and dislocation of tho present balance between the two types of pximary production.