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Thursday, Oct 10, 2013
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THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF MID CANTERBURY
Farmers in year from hell BY SUE NEWMAN
SUE.N@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
For Mid Canterbury’s sheep and beef farmers this week’s snowfall is the final straw in what is proving to be the year from hell. As foothills and high country farmers battled snow and freezing temperatures to rescue new born lambs, they were also counting the cost of a year that failed to deliver on many fronts. And Federated Farmers national meat and fibre section chair Jeanette Maxwell is concerned that this snowfall might be one blow too many. “We have to take these hits in our stride, that’s farming, but so many things have happened to Canterbury farmers this year you wonder how much more some can take.” About eight centimetres of snow was lying inland from Methven and into the foothills yesterday with intermittent rain helping reduce the depth. It was very cold but as long as the wind didn’t come up, lamb survival rates wouldn’t be too bad, Mrs Maxwell said. “Our biggest concern is how long this lasts. If it lasts too long the older lambs will start to go down and if the wind chill factor rises we’ll be in
Just one victim among many as the freezing conditions of the past two days have taken their toll on young lambs on the Ashburton District’s foothills farms. PHOTO TETSURO MITOMO 091013-TM-084
trouble.” This year would go down in the books for all the wrong reasons for many farmers, she said. “Prices were horrible for sheep and beef farmers, we had a drought even though we weren’t declared a drought
area, the June snow saw most farmers use up their feed, the windstorm took out our shelter belts and now we have snow at lambing. It’s been a challenging year.” For foothills farmers, the drought had affected sheep fertility rates with scanning back
20 tp 25 per cent. The snow could see a 15 per cent mortality rate and for some that would mean a lambing that was 40 per cent down on a normal year, Mrs Maxwell said. It would take years to recover from trees lost in the Sep-
tember wind storm but the immediate impact was being felt now during lambing, she said. In the space of just two days the Ashburton District went from an unseasonal 24.4 degrees on Sunday to a low of four degrees over the past two days.
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