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The Animal Health Board (AHB) has successfully prosecuted a Waiuku farmer for the illegal sale of cattle from a bovine tuberculosis (TB) infected herd. Geoffrey William Muir pleaded guilty at the Pukekohe District Court today to moving and selling cattle in breach of a restricted place notice imposed by the AHB in June 2008.Muir was fined $30,000 and $140 court costs. The AHB was awarded $10,454 in costs and $2,500 in legal costs. Muir was convicted on four charges of failing to notify the movement of an infected herd, making a false and misleading declaration, moving cattle to a third party’s farm and knowingly selling 157 cattle from a herd that was suspected of harbouring TB reports Scoop.

AHB chief executive William McCook said the prosecution showed the AHB would take action against farmers who fail to abide by livestock movement regulations. “It is clearly unacceptable that one man put his fellow farmers at risk for his own pecuniary gain. Selling cattle from a herd that is suspected or known to harbour bovine TB could have serious consequences for the national TB control programme. “We know a vast majority of the 73,000 cattle and deer farmers in New Zealand willingly comply with movement control restrictions and expect us to come down hard on those farmers who do not.

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Sheep and beef producers should pick the companies they supply carefully to avoid becoming casualties of an impending “train crash” in the industry, says the chairman of one of the key players in Rural News. Speaking at a M&WNZ monitor farm meeting in South Canterbury last week, Anzco chairman Graeme Harrison  said average return on shareholders’ funds across the four main companies is “not even the cost of capital”.

Normalised earnings figures – with exceptionals taken out to leave only meat industry activity – for the four largest meat companies over the past five years show combined earnings in 2008-09 were well below the five-year average even though turnover and assets employed increased.Average margin on sales was just 0.7%.“You can all see from these numbers a train crash is coming.”

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Te Pohue farm manager Peter Procter said years of losing thousands of dollars of stock and having to repair smashed gates and fences had pushed farmers to the point where they will fight back reports The NZ Herald. “I’ve had a gutsful – and so has everybody else who lives on Waitara Rd. It’s come to the crunch … if a dog sets foot on my place it will be dead and hanging on my gate for the owner to come and collect.”

Mr Proctor said he had seen too many shot and savaged livestock over the past few years on the property, off SH5, as illegal hunters target private farms and blocks for their shooting expeditions. “I’ve had poachers leave dogs on the farm overnight which have attacked sheep within a short period of time. I’ve had up to 20 ewes at once killed, and if you’ve ever seen a sheep still alive with half its face peeled off you wouldn’t think twice about shooting these kinds of dogs.”.

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Deer numbers have fallen to levels last seen in 1994 as the sector continues to feel the fallout from record prices earlier this decade.The latest available census, done in 2008, showed a herd of 1.2 million reports The ODT. The kill this year was forecast to fall below 400,000, compared with a peak a few years ago of 750,000. Deer Industry New Zealand (DINZ) chief executive Mark O’Connor attributed the decline to farmers killing capital stock as venison prices fell, a situation from which the industry had yet to recover.

He believed there was a rebalancing occurring in the industry, and those farmers who remained carrying larger numbers of animals would be more productive. DINZ chairman John Scurr, of Wanaka, said the forecast kill was lower than the board would like, but that was a factor of supply and demand which was beyond its control. The sector had been hit by changing land use, and much of its traditional finishing country was now being used for dairying. That meant deer herds were being pushed into the high country foothills. This was despite deer farming being financially competitive with lamb finishing and wool and dairy grazing, he said.

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Improved productivity could reduce on-farm greenhouse gas emissions from sheep by up to 12%, according to the author of a study which calculated the carbon footprint of sheep. Stewart Ledgard, a principal AgResearch scientist, said a higher lambing percentage and faster lamb growth rates offered the best options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from sheep, as opposed to reducing fossil fuel use, which was low on sheep farms compared with other intensive agricultural systems.

Dr Ledgard said the 1.9kg of CO2-equivalent produced for each 100g portion of lamb exported to Europe, was “broadly consistent with other international studies of products derived from farmed, ruminant livestock reports The ODT. His study found 57% of the sheep carbon footprint was generated by the natural process of animals utilising pasture and producing methane during digestion, but it was a figure that has been decreasing.

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The dairy boom continued in Canterbury and Southland with the South Island dairy herd up 13 per cent last year to 2.1 million, according to official figures. The South Island dairy herd is almost seven times the size it wasy 20 years ago. Canterbury was the South Island’s largest dairying region, recording 10 per cent growth to reach a herd size of 918,000, followed by Southland, where numbers grew 19 per cent to reach 589,000, according to the final results of the 2009 Agricultural Production Survey reports Stuff.

National dairy herd numbers reached a record high of 5.9 million at 30 June 2009, up 282,000 since 2008. The size of the North Island herd remained stable at 3.8 million. Factors contributing to the South Island growth include continued dairy conversions, a smaller number of dairy cows and heifers going to the beef herd, more older cows remaining in milking herds, and the sourcing of dairy heifers from the North Island. “In 2009, South Island dairy cattle numbers were almost seven times larger than 20 years ago when there were 312,000 dairy cattle,” said agricultural statistics manager Gary Dunnet.

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It had been another tough year for many of the region’s farmers, Mr Evans said in his annual report in the Marlborough Express. A cold, wet spring had produced insufficient growth in areas, in particular the high country, but other parts of Marlborough had seldom had a better run into summer. However, the good times had come to an “abrupt end” with a very dry autumn. The emissions trading scheme was a major issue for farmers and nothing less than “workplace bullying”.

 Meat and Fibre chairman William Grigg said the demand for both beef and lamb was up on last year in international markets. Mr Grigg said Australia and the United States were in a herd-rebuilding phase and a looming shortage of beef, domestic and imported, had seen prices soar in recent weeks.

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Most progressive deer farmers realise the importance of scanning hinds to see if they are pregnant, says Feilding based-veterinarian Barney Askin. The cooler nights signal the onset of the roar in stags, and most should have done the majority of their work reports The Manawatu Standard. “There is only a small window during which time we can accurately tell how many hinds are pregnant. The foetus is sitting high in the pelvis – as the pregnancy progresses, the foetus moves further down and we can’t scan it.”

About 30 per cent of deer farmers pregnancy tested their hinds, he said. Many of the others choose not to do so on the basis of cost, or they ran a few deer in conjunction with sheep and beef. Mr Askin said a good pregnancy rate would be about 90 per cent of hinds.”We did do one lot of about 40 hinds. The farmer had paid $8000 for the stag. They were all dry – the stag was infertile.Mr Askin said the stag was replaced, but the farmer lost a year’s production.

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Police and the Southland District Council will take a hard line against farmers whose stock are found wandering on roads after a reported 13 crashes this year reports The Southland Times.Three drivers were injured in the crashes, seven of which involved cattle. Horse, sheep and deer were also involved.Senior Sergeant Kerrin Price, of the strategic traffic unit, said in the latest serious incident, officers were on Saturday called to deal with a “stroppy and aggressive” bull wandering in Oporo Flat Rd, near Wallacetown, that had tried to attack a cyclist.

Stock control officers were called and they recognised the bull as one they had been called out to twice four days earlier. The owner could not be found so the bull was shot because of public safety fears. A Dacre woman who narrowly escaped serious injury after hitting a cow near Woodlands last month said she wanted farmers to take more care with fences. The woman said she had little time to react when the black cow loomed up in her headlights while travelling home one night.”It’s not good enough – the farmer should have the boundary fence hotwired. Cattle have no respect for ordinary fences.” Mr Price said officers were amazed she had walked away without injury. The next motorist hitting wandering stock might not be so lucky, he said.

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