Good morning readers. Gosh. I was sitting at the machine last night comtemplating this blogg. Going through the material I felt really down. We have just gone through another really dry summer. I have got less feed now than I did at this point last year. On the plus side the water held up better. We got a hand full of more troughs in, in paddocks that ran out of water last year, having got the digger to make feeder dams bigger deeper. On the real negative side is our lambing % is way way down. Really gutted me. As i said we had more grass last year, and i was pretty happy with the ewe condition. Come scanning it was a different story. A contributing factor I identified was a very high feotal reabsorption rate. Well in excesss of 40%. I had already got on my bike through lambing and picked up fresh carcass’es, froze and took to the vet for post morten. The result that came back was a iodine deficiency. So this year I have to drench at scanning and again pre lamb.
Having got back on the farm after Regional Council has enabled me to focus on other issues ,one in particular that has recieved alot of rural news is stock theft. I know that the Police have made a big thing of contacting them and the use of the mapping site on the webb ,but up until laterly I have found our guy’s useless. One officer watched a couple of goats push through the boundary,and explained. Mike ,there you see. They are shifting owners of their own accord, That is not stealing. I am not joking. Well this, year ewes started coming back to me via the same route,( seems the grass is sweeter on my side of the fence) that had clearly been over marked. You could still see the reminent of our mark. I went to a fair bit of trouble and cost, DNA testing our rams ,those ewes identified, and really jumping up and down I provided the police with my sheep reconciliation sheet for the last 4 years which clearly showed a problem. I demanded that they muster a certain property. They declined but on the positive they went and saw one particular person, went through his financial statements, stock movement records, which I understand were not up to scratch , in that they were missing. Then read the riot act.
It is like the wild west out here now. These guy,s come in here, with barely enough dosh to get started ,by and large paying over the top for the property ,get to end of the first year and Oh My God. What are we to do now.
Well the action I have taken is to start renewing sections of the boundary and am spending more time checking and maintaining the balance. It was something I just did not get time to do before. Yes I should have got somebody in to do that, but such casual staff are hard to come by, and if they are available are very very unreliable.
And can you believe it suddenly sheep started being returned. In a very short space of time 40 odd turned up in one hr. Even my good neighbours noticed.
I still have some way to go though and these coming months I will have to be on the ball.
Over the preceeding months,years I have tried to convey to my readers just what is going on in New Zealand. I have to ask. Have you heard of or remember the Mc Gillicuddy party that contested the Central Government elections 30-40 something years ago. You must remmeber, those long haired junky types that promoted the giant leap backwards for man kind.
Well they are alive well and kicking ,having dumped the dope smoking hippy type image, got educated as lawyers, judges, planners , financial officers, teachers and scientists. Became well respected members and elected representative of communities to various forms of local, regional and central government. They reinvented them selves politically to be be more appealing to the voting public and got a hair cut.
But never the less they still advocate the giant leap backwards for man kind. God only knows how we are to pay our nations bills yet alone maintain our essential infrastructure and social services. I read that as reported in the NZ Herald April 24th pg A23. The Australian Govt obviously must be concerned about NZ,s future and our ability to cope with such a scenario, in that they have just ordered 2 squadrons of the lastest F-35 fighter bomber jets from the US. To be based…. No not in the Northern territory as you would expect. But Sydney.
Good on Shane Jones for saying it as it is. These people are anti economic growth.(pg 7 NZ Herald April 24th)
They have infiltrated every decision making body in our society where there is opportunity to make negative decisions that bring about the out come they desire. A Great leap Backwards. They are using Bio-diversity,Water and Soil out comes ,making absolutley rediculous statements about the impending collapse of the environment, wheeling out very subject designer science and even to the point seeing science opposing their view removed from public view. They have become masters of subjectivity including the interpretation of law.
Recently reading through the Rural News, a paper that is very informative and a must read, I read to my astonishment .Land Corp makes subtile changes to its strategic direction. There it is on the front page. Less milk more honey. Again on page 15. On page 6 & 7 of the same, the Ruataniwha Dam features. A good decision or not. and Council chair in serious study mode. My view. It,s a gone burger. The Mc Gillicuddy party and their mates have seen to that. The scheme will only sustain a sheep milking economy,as these animals excrete the least Nitrogen. I do not doubt that the wider catchment will heave a sigh of relief as well given that those land users who derieve no benefit from the scheme water wise, were captured by the overly restrictive N leaching limits. I wonder if they realise it. This only came to my attention via Beef and Lambs submission to the Hearing last yr. Cunning way of bringing about land use change as the limit for those is alot more rstrictive than what was to be imposed on the schemes users/beneficieries. Could it be that the Govt via Land Corp will ride to the rescue and encourage the Chinese to invest in large scale sheep milking and processing. Where are these sheep to come from?
As I have allured to, I hope, the dairy industry has tried to head off the loony left by promoting, pushing farmers into barns. I hope these guys do their home work, for my thoughts are that such infrastructure will soak up a lot of capital, adding cost and destroying wealth. Exactly what the McG party wants.
Here it is on pg 14 Farmers Weekly April 28th. US looms as chief dairy threat. Huge barns ,Tens of thousands of cows ,up to 200 staff. We can never compete with using the same infrastructure/methods. Our competitive advantage is Grass. The only feed source that is cheaper than the US barn.
There was a piece of blunt talking reported in the Straight Furrow April 29th. This is regard to the Ruataniwha Dam. Quote” I will be blunt to make a point; The shit in the Tuki Tuki during summer low follows is mostly human. Up to 70% of the phospherous loading during low flows has come from the waste water plants of Waipukurau, Waipawa, Otane, and Takapau. The Dam would have put a quater of a $billion into those towns each year providing councils with the means to meet increasing water quality standards. No scheme ,no money for essential upgrades.” end.
I have made my point.