The plant was introduced in the United States in the 1930s to minimise soil erosion. Adding the patented dry hay and pelleted forms of this plant to animal feed thwarts the reproductive cycles of gastrointestinal nematodes that are in the digestive tracts of goats and sheep. It is particularly effective in controlling the barber’s pole worm (Haemonchus contortus), a nematode that attaches to the animals’ abomasal (true stomach) wall and feeds on their blood. Female worms can produce more than 5,000 eggs per day that are shed in the animal’s manure.

After hatching outside the animal, H. contortus larvae moult several times, resulting in a more developed and infectious larval form on grass leaves that animals consume during grazing. Once the infectious larvae are inside the animal, they suck the animal’s blood, potentially leading to anaemia, weakness and even death. In the southern United States, goat production for meat or milk is an attractive alternative business for farmers because of the comparatively low cost of breeding stock, the high reproductive rate of goats, and the animals’ ability to thrive on native pastures or brushland that is unsuitable for cropping. This parasite causes large economic losses for farmers around the world, and the worm has developed resistance to chemical interventions.

In the case of Mr Avery, and all other sheep and beef farmers, it will be based on the weight of meat from their slaughtered animals. He thinks that is unfair. It makes no allowance for the way he, and many others like him, farm, which he maintains emits less greenhouse gases than others and stores more carbon. There is another reason why it is unfair. It punishes innovation. Mr Avery has worked out an innovative way to keep farming on drought-prone land.

He suffered six years of drought before hitting on the idea – and credit must also be given here to Lincoln plant scientist Derrick Moot – of grazing his sheep on lucerne. The result has been a surge in lamb growth, so much so that the lambs take eight to 11 weeks less time to reach market weights and therefore are belching and farting less methane into the atmosphere.Compared with 1990 – and he has to go back that far to find a drought- free period – when he had 3300 ewes and 900 hoggets, he now has 2200 ewes and 650 hoggets.

But by selectively breeding sheep better able to handle the conditions and by mating hoggets and growing them on lucerne, he produces more lamb meat than in 1990. Lambs finish in 12 to 14 weeks, rather than the 20 to 25 weeks of 1990. The lucerne – and he has a massive 350 hectares of it – has another benefit. It sends roots deep down into the soil – as much as 10 metres – increasing the soil carbon and its moisture content.

 He estimates he has about 5 million plants on a hectare. “Think of how much biomass we have put under the ground in the last 20 years,” he says.”That’s one heap of carbon. Any recognition? None.”

Peter Walters, who farms at Otorohanga, said his trial paddock of AR37 had a level of 60 beetles per square metre.”After two years of growing AR37 it’s destroyed.” DairyNZ scientist Chris Glassey said AR37 was not as resistant as first thought. “The larvae still feed on the roots of AR37, it only protects against adult black beetle,” he said.

DairyNZ consulting officer Wayne Berry told farmers: `You are not listening to our biggest message. “We are in the Waikato, which is predisposed to the black beetle, and we have got to spray the buggers out. “We have been using AR1 and the black beetle has been having a merry old party at our expense. “Identify the worst four or five per cent of the farm. Get a chemical spray, like Round Up, and put it on. Then spray it out come spring, planting chicory, maize or turnips,” Mr Berry said.

“It’s not going to stop the black beetle unless we all get on board. “It’s getting frustrating for me, as a consulting officer, because the message is not getting out there.” Kevin Robinson, who farms on the Hauraki Plains, said RD1 was still selling AR1 but “not pushing it like they used to”. Meanwhile Hauraki Vet Services vet Neil Haywood reminded farmers to continue dosing their animals with zinc as a precaution against facial eczema because the weather hadn’t cooled down enough to kill the spores that caused the disease.

“We certainly can’t afford to rest on our laurels, although this is a considerable improvement on the same time last year, when 119 cattle herds and 10 deer herds were infected with bovine TB. “While possums remain the main source of TB infection in livestock, a smaller but no less significant number of herd breakdowns have been caused through uncontrolled stock movements.

“Reducing possum densities in the wild and sustaining this population is still the key to maintaining low stock infection rates. This also reduces the risk of TB spreading through stock movement. “The pest control operations being undertaken by the AHB in 2010 are designed to stop the transfer of infection between possums and cattle. Each of these operations is vital if New Zealand is to reach the international TB-free standard.

 Yet there is still someway to go before we can claim to be free from TB.“That’s because, as it stands, infected wild animals inhabit an estimated 38 per cent of New Zealand’s land mass.“Nevertheless, the success of the programme to date is a credit to the agricultural industry and to those people dedicated to eradicating TB from NZ. “Farmers and landowners are encouraged to keep up the good work by regularly testing their animals for TB and using the correct identification tags,” Dr Livingstone concluded.

Mr Houghton said the case, coupled with the declaration of a medium-level drought, served as a timely reminder to farmers to check stock sent to graziers every 10 days to two weeks. Reputable grazier Richard Strang, who grazes 500 dairy heifers for other farmers on his Putaruru farm, agreed with Mr Houghton. “If I have got someone else’s cattle on my property it’s my responsibility to provide supplementary feed for them,” he said. He said he had no objections to farmers viewing their stock, so long as they contacted him first.

Ian Wickham, managing director of the New Zealand Grazing Co, which grazes thousands of animals on scores of Waikato farms, didn’t have much sympathy for farmers who did not have enough feed. He said his company always forward planned for a drought and had plenty of feed this season. “Farmers expect to have no food available if it does not rain.”

Those not already dead were worm- ridden, weak and emaciated. Dozens of the animals were euthanased. Judge Adeane said Clark was a first-time offender, and there was no suggestion he was “willfully cruel for the sake of cruelty. Rather he has fallen short of good [farming] standards”. An Agriculture and Forestry Ministry statement of facts presented to Gisborne District Court this week said the land could not possibly have provided enough feed for the animals.

Exactly how many sheep had died was unclear, with 600 unaccounted for, believed to have died in inaccessible areas of the forest. “Numerous” sheep were found dead along tracks. Just over 300 were believed to have escaped to neighbouring properties. The rest, believed to be about 350, were rescued from the block. An autopsy on one of the euthanased sheep showed the only thing in its stomach was “the mud it had eaten in an attempt to stay alive”. The statement said: “The defendant’s conduct during this entire investigation has been such that he has shown little concern and empathy towards his animals”.

“The conduct in this case is substantially worsened by the defendant’s leadership position and role as a livestock manager and stud stock auctioneer for New Zealand’s largest stock and station firm, PGG Wrightson.”

 PGG Wrightson’s East Coast regional manager, Tom Mowat, confirmed that Clark still worked for the firm, but “internal measures” had been taken. He was no longer a livestock manager as a result of the court case, but had been retained as a livestock representative and auctioneer.

Event organiser Dave Ramsay said one hunter returned to a block that yielded a high number of kills during the shoot, only to find rabbits still in abundance the morning after. “We’ve made a good dent in numbers, and rabbits are coming into a dormant breeding season, but there’s no doubt we’ll have plenty again next year,” Mr Ramsay said.

The winning team, Team S.W.A.T, made up of hunters from Invercargill, Winton, Nightcaps, and a friend from New Plymouth, took a total of 2306 rabbits, one hare and five stoats.Mr Wilton is the only member of the original team, but had no trouble attracting new members. “We’re all farmers who enjoy shooting and know that rabbits are a huge problem in the Alexandra area. So it’s fun for us, but it’s also good to help keep rabbit numbers down.”

Most team members stayed awake for the duration of the 24-hour hunting period. The teams’ success came down to drawing a heavily populated hunting block, commitment and working together, Mr Wilton said. “We realised we’d need more ammo than we thought, so got extra sent in from Alexandra on Friday, and the team worked well together with our spotlights during the night,” he said.

“Even with some weather changes now, farmers still need to take facial eczema particularly seriously,” said AgResearch Senior Scientist Dr Chris Morris who is part of a team operating a MAF Sustainable Farming Fund project to monitor zinc protection. “Zinc sulphate is a water-trough treatment which should be effective and easily applied. Facial eczema risk can vary greatly from herd to herd, and even from paddock to paddock, so it is good to be prepared even when the risk in a region appears to be low.”

Dr Morris says the majority of herds AgResearch has looked at are under-protected, so to maximise herd health and welfare, farmers need to ask:

1. Are troughs in every paddock getting enough zinc?
2. Is the concentration of zinc sulphate right? Recommended concentrations of elemental zinc in the trough water are 60-230 mg/L, and this can be tested in a laboratory (shop around for quotes for testing costs).
3. Are all cows getting enough water and therefore zinc from the trough?

“Sadly there are no cheap options with facial eczema and breeding resistance to facial eczema is the only long-term solution. All combat options are expensive and as well as zinc farmers can also either try to avoid the facial eczema toxin by feeding hay, silage or crop, or alternatively, by spraying to kill the fungus. There are other zinc options – such as zinc oxide drenching, or use of ‘Time Capsules’ (all ages) or ‘Faceguard’ boluses (young stock), and farmers can ask their animal health specialists about these.”

“The bright spot on the horizon is that facial eczema resistance in dairy cattle is a heritable trait and AgResearch work over the last six years means that cows and sires can now be ranked for facial eczema resistance, so long term resistant herds can be built up,” said Dr Morris.

North Otago Federated Farmers president Ross Ewing agreed, saying while farmers would welcome any rain, cool nights and wind meant it was getting late for vegetation growth to recover. “It’s getting serious. The trouble is, winter is coming and nothing is happening.” Oturehua farmer Ken Gillespie said just 190mm of rain had fallen on his farm since last May, making it one of the driest years he could remember. The long-term annual average was 520mm.

Mr Gillespie said most farmers were down to basic breeding stock, and he had been feeding grain to his ewes for the last two weeks. Most farmers had enough supplementary feed to get through winter, but it would be tight. Mr Gillespie said 12mm to 15mm of rain in the next week or two would boost feed reserves, as long as there was no wind, which had negated any benefit from earlier falls.

And even in Northland all is not lost. Farmers from further down the island are turning up at stock sales in Wellsford and Kaikohe to buy weaner steers at prices that will help lift sagging spirits. For dairy farmers, the joys of a green summer come mainly from less stress on their cows, although the slightly increased milk they are giving will mean a timely lift in profits in a high payout year. Fonterra reports milk flow is almost 2 per cent up on last year, despite the Northland drought, though a big contributor is the new South Island conversions.

The sheep and beef farmers are seeing the green pastures being devoured by their animals and quickly converted into meat, and enjoying the luxury of being able to choose when to sell their stock. It’s a balancing act. Primarily, they need the animals to keep their pastures from running too quickly to rough and spoiling the quality needed later in the year. Chewing down to the bottom of the green shoots keeps the grass at its most nutritious. Let it get too long and coarse and it has less goodness and is harder to digest.

As winter approaches, grass growth will slow and the lambs will have to go. The trick is to keep them long enough to make the best use of their grazing abilities and to sell them when the price is right. Wait too long and sell when there’s a glut, and the difference could be thousands of dollars. All this has not been good for the meat industry. With lambs being held back, some meatworks have severely cut working hours. Across both islands, more than half of the kill still has to appear. The companies are bracing themselves for a rush after Easter.

Those farmers who suffered from drought are still recovering. The luxuriant feed will ensure ewes go to the ram this autumn in excellent condition and, fingers crossed for a kind spring, lamb birth rates will be high. But the east coasters don’t have big flocks to draw on. Many were forced to cut deep into their mobs of replacement lambs to survive last year and now, when they have the grass to spare, tough credit restrictions by their banks are keeping them from finding new blood at the stock sales.