OPINION: Jon Morgans  catch-cry has always been “Follow the science”. I believe that science, with its rigid and thorough testing of ideas and experiments, followed by peer review of the methods and results, shows us the truth of a matter. Late last year, I put up the idea that to reduce nitrogen leaching in sensitive catchments perhaps organic dairying might be worth a try. Organic farmers can’t grow grass as well as conventional farmers and therefore their stocking rates are lower. But they are paid a premium by the dairy companies and the farmer converting to organics would not have lost money. The response was mixed, to say the least.

Organic industry people welcomed me with open arms. Conventional farmers abused me for falling for the tosh spouted by greenies. But I could also have followed the science. It’s a good thing I have Doug Edmeades to put me right. Dr Edmeades is a soil scientist who works independently of local and central government, crown research institutes and fertiliser, meat and dairy companies. His firm is called agknowledge.

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The continuing wet and warm weather is the perfect storm for flystrike, and it is likely to be having an impact on lambs in the region, says farm advisor Garry Massicks from Feilding-based Stantiall and Keeling. Shearing is behind where it would normally be because the wet weather has dampened wool, making stock unable to be shorn on some days reports The Manawatu Standard.

“I think flystrike is a problem. Farmers are keen to get the wool off lambs, which solves a large part of the flystrike problem,” Mr Massicks said. He said that if lambs could not be shorn immediately, farmers needed to do preventive flystrike control. “The two weeks of wind we’ve had were terrible, but the one good thing was it stopped flystrike.” Wind helps to dry wool and dags and makes flying hard for flies.

He said the forecast was for more rain and warm temperatures. “It’s an ideal forecast for two things – disease in cereal crops and flystrike.” Farm advisor Greg Sheppard from Sheppard Agriculture, based in Dannevirke, said he hadn’t heard of flystrike being a big issue in the Tararua district. “It has been pretty cold, and the wind we’ve had has tended to dry lambs out.” He said there was plenty of stock feed on pastures in the district.

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With the national sheep flock reduced to 34 million (half the number of 50 years ago) due to a continuing decline in wool income and the growth of dairy farming, there’s a big question mark hanging over the future of sheep. Farmers are experimenting with ways to eliminate the workload associated with wool and focuse on the meat.  Sheep that naturally shed their wool are increasingly sought after reports The Taranaki Daily. There are now 60 registered studs of the self-shedding breeds, which include the Dorper, Dorset Horn, Wiltshire Horn, Damara and Meatmaster.

Hill country farming needs a sheep and cattle mix for weed, pasture and parasite control. In a farming region as diverse as Taranaki, sheep farming traditions have been abandoned as farmers try new strategies. John Earney, who breeds self- shedding Wiltshires at Huiroa, says his Avonstour Farm ram sales are doubling every year. These sheep lose their belly and crutch wool after the first two crosses and don’t need shearing at all after the third cross. They will lamb twice a year and require little drenching for worm control.

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The Government is expanding its voluntary bonding scheme for veterinarians. Agriculture Minister David Carter says the scheme will expand to cover all practices that deal with production animals. The scheme, launched last year, encourages new graduates to stay in an eligible practice by providing a taxable payment of $11,000 for every year, up to five years, that they are working in the practice. The scheme was originally aimed at practices in specific rural areas. Since then, 20 vets have been accepted into the scheme reports Rural News.

From this year, all practices that deal with production animals like dairy and beef cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry will be eligible, providing the vets receiving the funding spend most of their time working with these animals. Carter says the changes are the result of feedback from veterinarians and the NZ Vet Association.

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Hamilton farmer Gavin Shewan has defended the sale of seriously emaciated cows at Morrinsville saleyard last month. The Agriculture and Forestry Ministry and the SPCA began investigations after Waikato Times Farmer columnist Clive Dalton, a retired agricultural scientist and former Wintec lecturer, photographed cows which he said were at best Body Condition Score 2. “By law the vendor should not have offered them for sale, the saleyards should not have accepted them, and the auctioneer should not have sold them. They should have been sent home.” Both Sue Macky, director of Dairy Production Systems, and Greg McNeil, manager of the Te Awamutu branch of VetEnt, said over-estimating condition scores and using herd averages was to blame.

But Mr Shewan, who attended the sale, said while he did not know how to condition score, he nearly always knew if a cow was healthy enough to be transported. He thought the animals photographed were healthy enough. Mr Shewan said Dr Dalton’s suggestion that the cows should have been sent home would increase stress and disagreed with DairyNZ senior scientist Dr Gwyn Verkerk, who said cows with a condition score under 2.5 should not be transported and be destroyed on-farm.

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Farmers and technology experts are questioning plans to use “outdated” and “expensive” low-frequency radio technology in a controversial $23.3 million scheme to tag and trace NZ cattle. Cabinet will decide the fate of the National Animal Identification and Tracing (Nait) scheme in the new year after reviewing the final business case reports Stuff. The scheme would mean all cattle and deer would be tagged with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips by the middle of 2011.

Their movements would be recorded in a database that could help track animals during outbreaks of disease and tell consumers where meat had come from. Sheep may eventually be tagged. Nait’s governance group has opted to use “tried and true” but less-advanced low-frequency RFID technology to tag cattle, rather than ultra-high frequency (UHF) technology which allows tags to be read from a greater distance and multiple tags to be read at one time. It will consider alternative technologies, once they have been proven and accepted.

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The Government is investing money in biological research to find a new generation of more effective animal health drenches, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to farming internationally reports The Taranaki Daily. Scientists are looking for active molecules which will overcome the drench-resistance factor that makes current worm treatment remedies ineffective over time. ParaCo Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Crown Research Institute AgResearch, has signed agreements with research groups giving it exclusive animal health screening rights for several potentially active biological molecules.

ParaCo has been established to screen molecule libraries for animal health activity and has grown out of restructuring of the Wool Consortium, Ovita and the buyout of Wool Equities Ltd and Meat and Wool New Zealand’s ParaCo shareholding by AgResearch. Dr Ian Boddy, managing director of ParaCo and commercial manager of AgResearch, said: “Our initial aim was to access molecules with known biological activity and then test whether they had any effect on key animal health targets such as gastrointestinal nematode parasites. By choosing molecules designed to be biologically active, we hoped to increase our chance of finding activity in our area of interest.”

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Researchers aiming to control or even eliminate a disease in farm livestock which costs the nation up to $88 million a year are probing where some genetic types of animal are particularly susceptible or resistant reports Stuff.  A micro-organism with the tongue-twisting scientific label of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis — also known as MAP — causes Johne’s disease, a chronic wasting intestinal disease in a range of animals, including cattle, deer and sheep.

Johnes is spread by the faeces of infected animals and blocks the absorption of food, causing them to waste away and die. Bacteria infect the walls of the intestines, causing a malabsorption syndrome, protein loss from the inflamed bowel, anaemia, and the collapse of the immune system. It can not only mimic other health problems such as chronic parasitism, trace element deficiency and poor nutrition, but also interfere with tests for bovine tuberculosis.

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Massey University and Australian animal welfare experts gathered for their first meeting to talk through animal welfare issues, putting them on the world animal welfare stage, says Massey’s Professor Kevin Stafford reports The Manawatu Standard. The meeting saw representatives from five research institutions come together to discuss how they could contribute to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), particularly in Oceania and the wider Asian region.

Massey’s Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics Centre was named as an OIE collaborating centre in 2007. The centre operates as a partnership between the New Zealand and Australian governments and the research institutions. And the history and future of animal welfare is encompassed in a new book co-written by two Massey University researchers involved in the centre. The book provides distinct New Zealand perspectives on the theory and practice of animal welfare science set in a global context.

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Foot and mouth disease could reach NZ in palm kernel but steps are finally being taken to close down the pathway, says Federated Farmers. Biosecurity spokesman John Hartnell says he understands Biosecurity NZ is working with its Australian counterpart to tackle what it now admits is a gap in the current import health standard reports Rural News. ‘Barry O’Neil [deputy director of Biosecurity NZ] now accepts that there is a hole there and says they are working with Australian biosecurity to strengthen the systems in that area.’

The current import health standard relies on heating during oil extraction, rendering the meal sterile, but meal is often stored before shipment, sometimes on bare earth. That provides a window for insect infestation and, worse still, contamination with potential foot and mouth disease bearing material such as soil or animal remains, says Hartnell. Federated Farmers has received reports of soil contamination in PKE delivered to farms in New Zealand.

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