LOSSES FROM SNOW

Waipukurau Press, Issue 310, 19 September 1908, Page 6

LOSSES FROM SNOW

A runholder from the centre of the Southern snow country has informed the Oamaru “ Mail that now owners are able to move round among their stock they fiund a greater proportion still extant than had been anticipated. In places the mortality will certainly be high. He himself lost onethird of his flock, but he was in a particularly bad locality. The deaths on the Canterbury side, too, will prove extremely numerous, Mr Grant, of Gray’s Hills, having suffered extensively. He is of opinion that any innholder over the divide who has lost less than 40 per cent, of his stock is more fortunate than his fellows. The snow has disappeared rapidly during the past week, and feed is abundant —too plentiful, in fact, for the sheep are not in a condition to stand the luxuriant grass, which scours them out and causes many deaths. Apart from the actual mortality, the loss incidental to the snow will be great. The wool clip will suffer tremendously both in quantity and in quality. In those paddocks where the sheep have been penned for feeding, it would almost pay to gather the dead wool with a hay rake ; so much of it has fallen out in some cases that the sheep are almost bare. Then the proportion 'of lambs dropped must show a very large falling off as compared with that of the average year, and further than this the ewes will not be in a condition to nourish their offspring. The fencing proposition throughout the whole of the snow country is going to cause some cogitation during the next month or two, for even the soundest of fences are twisted up as though they were suffering from the effects of a vigorous earthquake. Taken all in all the settlers in the back country will not view the last four months of 1908 in the light of a picnic.