Category: Country

Source: Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

It is spelt “Wayleggo” but pronounced “Wal-a-go” and in dog trialling and shepherding it is an age-old New Zealand call for a sheep dog to leave the sheep and come back to its master.

“Wayleggo” originated in New Zealand and is short for “come away and let go”, the phrase used by shepherds and musterers to call their dogs back from working stock, according to the NZ Sheep Dog Trial Association.

The Wayleggo Cup is the dog trialling equivalent of the Bledisloe in rugby.

It’s been competed for since 1985 and just like the All Blacks, the New Zealand dog trials team has dominated the competition, winning 21 of 37 competitions over the past 40 years. Last year, however, the Aussies won on home soil, so this year it was their turn to cross the Tasman and try and retain the cup on Kiwi soil.

In October the event was part of the  Ashburton A&P show with four handlers and dogs from each country and two days of competition.

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The love for the sport can be seen in the efforts competitors go to just to compete. Queenslander Barry Knight drove from Toowoomba to Perth to compete and be selected for the Australian test team, a journey not for the faint-hearted.  

“We travelled to Western Australia,” Knight said.

“The round trip was about 10,000km, driving the ute all the way with a trailer and driving all the way back – five days each way and three days there.”  

So, with a potential commitment of two weeks for one event, young shepherds don’t often compete because they can’t afford the time off.

Barry and his 26-year-old son Bailey are the first father and son to compete for the Australian test team.

Barry has a small farm and Bailey is a plumber which highlights the fact that most competitors in dog trialling across the Tasman are not farmers.   

The Knight family has a love of characterful names for their dogs. Barry’s heading dog is six-year-old Mavis and Bailey’s is eight-year-old is Duncan, named after the Slim Dusty song ‘I Love To Have A Beer with Duncan’.

Another first for the Australian team is the presence of Jessica Kimpton who is the only woman in this year’s competition. 

She is one quarter of the Aussie team, matching the proportion of women on the Australian dog trialling circuit.

Kimpton said she seldom had any pushback from the male competitors

“They’re good, and even if they weren’t, they’d just have to suck it up,” she laughed.

“We actually see a lot more women in Australia being out there on the trial course. While it’s still male dominated, about 25 percent of triallists now would be women.”

She is an animal trainer for movies and while training her dogs she discovered dog trialling as a sport and loves it.  

She said the bond between handler and dog is vital to be a top competitor.

“Some dogs just have ‘it’,” she said. 

“We don’t know how to describe what ‘it’ is, but some dogs are just so talented, and you get this relationship with them where it’s almost like you’re reading each other’s minds and when you are out in the trial field, the rest of the world, just melts away, and it’s just you and your dog, and every now and then you’ll glance at each other and you just know what the other one needs.”

Commentator Tony Jackson farms 101,000ha in Queensland. 

He musters his 23,000 sheep and 3000 cattle using helicopters covering more than 30,000ha a day. He said the land is not as productive as that which New Zealand farmers enjoy and the pests are next level, kangaroos and dingoes.

“Every town has roo shooters who make a living out of harvesting kangaroos for the pet food market and for human consumption.

“They go out shooting and are shooting 50 kangaroos per night. That’s a Toyota load. And you’re looking at around about $25 a roo and if  you shoot 50 of them, you make a good living.”

It is the tenth year in the New Zealand team for team captain Mark Copeland and he is excited about the future of dog trialling.

“There is a lot of good young talent and particularly good talented women coming through.

“They’re putting the men to the sword, as it were, running very, very good well-trained dogs.”

“We’ve been trialling since what, 1860 or something, and you’re trying to get better and develop a better dog and it doesn’t always happen, so you go again and you go again and again.

“There’s no other sport that I can think of that involves three mammals. Some you can teach… others you can’t.”  

As for the result of the test? After leading the first day by just 10 points, the Australians made no match of it, retaining the Wayleggo Cup by 60 points and taking the cup back with them to Australia.   

So next year will be a big one for the Kiwi test team as they try and stop the Australians from winning a three-peat on their own turf.  

Learn more:

• Find out more about the Trans Tasman Test here and here

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Dairy prices are at near two-year low after the eighth consecutive fall in the global auction overnight.

The average price at the auction fell 4.3 percent to US$3507 a tonne, following the 3 percent drop in the previous auction two weeks ago.

The price of whole milk powder, which strongly influences the payout to farmers, fell 2.4 percent to US$3364 a tonne.

The Global Dairy Trade Price Index fell to its lowest level since January 2024.

NZX dairy analyst Rosalind Crickett said the latest auction saw weak bidding amid oversupply in the market.

“Regional buying again was dominated by North Asia which accounted for 50 percent of total product sold,” she said.

Crickett said the decline in milk powders (both whole milk and skim milk) came in above expectations.

She said global milk production was showing no sign of slowing down, with Chinese milk collections also rebounding.

“All in all, this is expected to keep downward pressure on milk powder prices globally, until a supply correction occurs,” Crickett said.

Butter prices fell more than 12 percent, while cheddar prices rose more than 7 percent.

Softening dairy prices have prompted dairy companies to lower the midpoint of its milk price forecast to $9.50 per kilogram of milk solids.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Canterbury grows most of the country’s wheat, barley and oat crops. But persistently low wheat prices coupled with a high milk payout are believed to be driving farmers out of the industry in hunt of the dairy dollar.

The Canterbury regional council said up to 25,000 more dairy cows could be added to the region’s herd this year, following an end to a temporary ban on intensive dairy farm conversions.

Environment Canterbury kept data on new dairy discharge consents as a proxy for conversions, which showed there were 32 new consents approved this year, and 15 more in progress.

It said the maximum number of cows that could be milked through the shed was 25,818 cows, among the approved consents.

Federated Farmers’ arable group chairman, David Birkett, said around half of those 32 consents would likely be arable farmers converting at least part of the farm into dairy.

“A number of arable farmers have gone down that path and are converting arable farms to dairy,” Birkett said.

He said low global wheat prices were hurting profitability locally, and animal feed was under increased pressure from imported feeds like palm kernel expeller (PKE).

“It’s a two-sided sword. I guess one, it tugs people out of the arable industry, which means there are less growers. But it also means that are we losing the critical mass of the industry?”

He said the arable industry required a lot of infrastructure collectively, including drying machinery.

“Do we get to a point where that infrastructure can’t be supported because we don’t have the critical mass of the number of growers?

“We’re not at that point yet, but I guess we’re as we lose growers, we are getting closer to that point.”

The Leeston farmer integrated sheep into his own cropping farming system to diversify income, and said strong meat prices were a “godsend”.

“Most people we think are around that break-even point, but a lot of that additional income has probably come from the livestock that they’ve had on farm.”

The lobby group’s latest twice-annual farmer confidence survey in July found that general confidence soared to its highest level in more than a decade.

Eighty-one percent of dairy farmers surveyed were making a profit, versus just one percent making a loss.

However, for arable, 40 percent were making a profit, while 29 percent were making a loss.

This week, Fonterra dropped their farmgate milk payout price forecast for the current season to $9.50 per kilogram of milk solids from $10.

Despite the drop though, dairy could still be considered a strong industry to be in with DairyNZ’s breakeven forecast sitting at $8.68.

Dairy cow numbers peaked a decade ago

The number of dairy cows nationwide dropped 0.5 percent in 2024/25 over the season to 4.68 million, that’s about 2 percent below the five-year average of 4.75 million, according to DairyNZ’s latest census of the dairy herd.

Meanwhile, milk solids production was up 2.9 percent.

New Zealand’s dairy cow numbers peaked in 2014/2015 at $5.02 million.

Just over 20 percent of the country’s dairy cow population were found in North and South Canterbury alone, at 940,583 cattle collectively.

Compared to the North Island, herd sizes were much larger in the South Island, covering 30 percent of the total dairy herds but 43 percent of the cow population.

What’s behind the temporary ban?

Legislation introduced in 2020 sought to temporarily restrict the expansion of intensive dairy farming, through the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater under the Resource Management Act (RMA).

It was expected that regional councils would introduce new freshwater plans or change existing plans before the dairy conversion moratorium expired in January, ECan said.

But in July, all plan changes were halted by the government in efforts RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop said would “stop councils wasting their officers’ time and their ratepayers’ money on”, ahead of an overhaul to the RMA.

Henceforth, consents were no longer required for land use change to dairy, however, they were required for animal effluent discharge.

Legislation replacing the RMA was expected to be introduced to parliament in the next couple of weeks.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

An Otatara man thought to be New Zealand’s longest-serving meat worker retired this month after 64 years in the industry.

Ken McLeod, 80, started in 1962 when he was only 16 at the now-closed Makarewa Meatworks in Southland.

“I was mostly a boner in all those years, and thanks to the Meat Workers Union we got very good money,” he told Morning Report on Friday.

“The money set me up for life and did everything else, and I’ve travelled a lot. I just enjoyed the good money and the hard work involved.”

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019014635/otatara-meat-worker-retires-after-64-years-on-the-job

He rarely took sick days, and worked his way up to boner, his favourite of the jobs. In the mid-1960s, when he was still a teenager, he was bringing home the modern equivalent of up to $4000 a week.

“I felt like I’d robbed a bank,” McLeod laughed.

“I saw a lot of people waste it. An old fellow who had worked in the works for years, he said, ‘Save half your pay and play out the rest, because he said, you’ll find it’ll be out.’ And that’s what I did.”

As the technology changed, so did the work – not to mention the conditions.

“I know this sounds horrible, but when I first started boning, I was 20 and we only changed clothes twice a week because they had to send the laundry into town or something like that.

“But then a couple of years later, they actually built a laundry and then we changed our laundry every day, which was what it has been ever since.”

An early computer brought in to handle payroll was unable to handle the wages – McLeod saying their pay packets had to be split in two because the amounts were too high for the machine to handle.

“We used to laugh, and they had to give us a pay worth gross of £100, and then another one of £20 or £30.”

McLeod eventually ended up at Blue Sky Pastures in 1988, where he has worked ever since. He also rose to become president of the Meat Workers Union.

But preparing meat was not what he originally intended to do with his life.

“I really wanted to join the Army and go to Vietnam, but… my mother wouldn’t sign the papers because you had to have your parents’ consent… I was only 20 at the time.

“But in hindsight it was the best thing because three or four years later I met my wife and I’ve been happily married for 56 years and [had] two lovely girls and they’re happily married and gave us four lovely grandchildren. So I’ve been very lucky in that respect.”

While the tough physical work has taken its toll McLeod has no plans to slow down, and intends to spend his retirement staying active with walking, fishing, deer hunting and maintaining his house.

While sheep farming is not what it once was in New Zealand, McLeod predicts a comeback.

“When I started there was 70 million sheep in New Zealand. Now there’s only about 23 or 25 [million]. There’s been massive changes, in Southland three of the big works have all closed down… they’ve all closed and there’s only the big Alliance works with four chains left…

“But there is hopefully a revival of sheep meat because the price for lamb this year is very good and wool’s actually gone up in price, so there may be a swing back to more sheep farming and hopefully there is.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Feral cats are responsible for spreading toxoplasmosis, which can cause “abortion storms” on sheep farms. Methods of control, such as annual culls, have come under fire from animal welfare advocates.

Content warning: This story describes the killing of animals, including an image of a trapped feral cat

It was over beers in a woolshed that the decision was made: Feral cats would be part of the North Canterbury Hunting Competition.

“We just sort of looked around and went, ‘Yeah, might as well’,” says organiser Matt Bailey.

“Unbeknown to us, it would go off like a powder keg within a matter of days of posting something on social media.”

What the farmers thought was a no-brainer decision to add another pest to the competition shocked cat lovers. The backlash was immediate and sponsors of the rural fundraising event came under attack on social media.

But, if anything, the outcry from animal rights advocates made the decision to include feral cats even more popular with farmers and sponsors.

“They poked the bear and it’s probably backfired for them because it’s gotten people off their asses and out there hunting,” says Bailey.

Three years on from the woolshed conversation, the cat category remains popular. This year, contestants entered 326 dead cats for the June weighing-in weekend.

Bailey suspects the real number of feral cats culled was higher. Farmers ran out of freezer space to store the bodies, he says.

“I knew guys catching 10 a week, and they weren’t keeping them.”

This year, there was no backlash from animal rights advocates, which Bailey reckons is down to increased awareness of the damage feral cats do.

It is one topic where hard-core conservationists and farmers find common ground. Feral cats decimate native wildlife and pose a disease risk to farm animals, and dolphins.

They are found on all types of farms, according to Bailey. On dairy farms feral cats are often spotted near milking sheds or hay sheds. They are also commonly seen near offal holes, or in Bailey’s case at lambing time, in paddocks eating afterbirth.

He said he had not heard anyone report an increase in rat numbers after removing cats, adding that if rats do appear, bait stations can be used.

And to critics who argue that trapping, neutering, and releasing feral cats is better than culling them, Bailey has a blunt response: “They’re killing our native birds and not shagging them.”

How feral cats can spread disease

There is no official estimate of how many feral cats there are in New Zealand. The number of 2.4 million is often cited, but some believe the true number is far higher.

Their number creates a disease risk for every farm in the country, says NZ Veterinary Association sheep and beef branch president and vet Alex Meban.

Toxoplasmosis is carried through cats and spread through their droppings. Tens of thousands of oocysts produced by the parasite can be in cat poo, which when accidentally ingested by sheep via grass, hay or water, can be infectious.

Toxoplasmosis can also be passed to humans through contaminated soil, water or unwashed vegetables, and is particularly dangerous during pregnancy or to people with compromised immune systems, but it also affects dolphins and farm animals, such as sheep.

For farmers, there are no outward signs of the disease until lambing time. That is when an “abortion storm” can occur, which is when more than five percent of ewes lose lambs.

“It can be devastating,” says Meban. Last season one farmer realised he had lost 30 percent of foetuses during scanning.

“We asked the question about wild cats, the answer was yep, there are lots of wild cats. They hadn’t really considered it to be an issue until scanning time.”

Lamb losses like this can mean the difference between breaking even or not for a year for a farmer.

There is a vaccine for the disease, and Meban says it only takes one season of heavy lambing loss to convince a farmer to vaccinate flocks. The vaccine costs between $3 and $5 and offers lifelong protection.

If lambs are worth $150 each, he says it does not take much for the vaccine to pay for itself. Vaccination should go hand-in-hand with reducing cat numbers on farms, he says.

Farmer trappers

A Federated Farmers pest survey last year, which had 700 responses, found 37 percent were actively managing feral cats, says the organisation’s meat and wool chairperson Richard Dawkins.

The survey showed 2868 cats were culled by farmers over a 12 month period.

Anecdotally, Dawkins says he has heard the number of feral cats is on the rise. He also points to the increased risk of toxoplasmosis and impacts native wildlife.

“I have one farmer report to me that on a braided riverbed, they had a cat take out 90 percent of a fledge of young birds in a colony that was on a river Island,” Dawkins says. The cat ate 60 of the chicks of a black fronted tern colony.

Farmers have told him live capture traps are the most effective, but these need to be checked daily, which is a time-consuming exercise for farmers with large blocks.

Cats need to be included in regional council pest management plans, but without extra funding of staffing, “it just becomes words on paper to be honest,” Dawkins says.

Increased public education would help, as would support for desexing domestic cats.

The problem increases around holiday periods, which could be caused by people dumping pets, Dawkins says.

“They’re a pretty loveable animal, and people may think they’re releasing them to run free and have a good life, but they may not understand those implications,” he says.

Alternatives to killing

The Animal Justice Party was one of the groups that expressed concern at the inclusion of feral cats in hunting competitions. Committee member Bridget Thompson says the party sees all animals as sentient and objects to the killing of feral cats.

The line between companion cats, strays living close to communities, and feral cats can be tricky for people to discern.

“The problem there is that if people cannot make the distinction, you get self proclaimed eco-warriors in the cities, thinking that if they go out and kill any cat community or companion, they are doing a good thing.”

Trapping and desexing is also not the preferred option, Thompson says. Instead, she would like a biological solution.

“We would like to see serious science into interrupting the fertility cycle.”

She acknowledges nothing like this exists at present.

Predator fences are also an option until science catches up.

“There’s a range of non-violent alternatives to current methods of population control.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Harking back to the days of A Dog’s Show, sheep dog trials are returning to the screen in a new broadcasting deal for next year’s New Zealand Rural Games.

After starting from scratch a decade ago, the event – which comprises the big rural sports in one tournament – is gearing up to reach an even wider audience.

Games founder Steve Hollander said the agreement with TVNZ and TVNZ+ marks a new phase for the games held annually in Palmerston North.

He said a significant factor in securing the new deal was the huge attraction of one particular sport.

“Those of us who are a little bit long in the tooth will remember the days when sheep dog trials were carried on television on A Dog’s Show and Country Calendar,” he said.

“Everyone loves it.

“I’d say the biggest crowd that watches any of our sports events watches the sheep dog trials.”

The upcoming event in March will see national titles awarded for speed shearing, timbersports and fencing.

Some of the rural sports under the radar getting their moment in the limelight include tree climbing and the Southern Hemisphere Highlander Championship.

Hollander said rural sports have been the backbone of generations and he was proud to broaden their reach.

The New Zealand Rural Games Trust has been up and running for 13 years as the main organiser of the event.

“This will be our 11th games with a couple of years off with Covid,” he said.

“It’s [The New Zealand Rural Games] one of the biggest investments in rural sports in more than a generation.”

Last year’s crowd over the three-day event in The Square in Palmerston North was 42,500.

Organisers are expecting an even bigger crowd next March with entry free for all the sports.

Also featuring on the television coverage will be the New Zealand Rural Sports Awards night, honouring legends of the rural sporting landscape.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand milk production hit historic levels in October, with national collections rising 2.8 percent year-on-year.

It marked the biggest October since 2018 and the third-largest month for milk production in New Zealand’s history.

It came as high global supply of milk saw Fonterra lower its forecast farmgate milk price on Tuesday to a mid point of $9.50 per kilogram of milk solids for the current season, down from $10.

NZX dairy analyst Lewis Hoggard said the lower payout would discourage farmers to carry on record milk production.

“There’ll definitely be a correction over time,” he said.

“Farmers have a sort of break-even price for what’s necessary in order to justify how much feed input they need to use. So by lowering that forecast that is gonna disincentivise a little bit of production.

“But $9.50 is still pretty strong, so I still see production being relatively strong going forward.

“But as payouts come down that should bring the supplementary feed down as well.”

Strong pasture growth earlier in spring and a high milk price had farmers feeding more supplement, with palm kernal imports (PKE) up around 7 percent in October.

PKE imports for the season so far were sitting 32 percent higher than last year too.

Hoggard said this was a sign farmers had been pushing production while payout expectations remained strong.

He said despite the reduced payout, Fonterra had lifted its forecast milk collections for this season to 1.545 billion kilos of milk solids, which signalled ongoing production strength.

Meanwhile, in Europe, dairy farmers have warned of a deepening price crisis, with the European Milk Board calling for immediate voluntary production cuts to stop prices collapsing.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Not even fast food giant McDonald’s New Zealand is immune to the rising cost of food, especially for key burger ingredient beef.

However, it recouped its spend on ingredients sourced in New Zealand last year with stronger earnings from its exports of them.

Around 90 percent of the fast food chain’s menu in its 170 restaurants across Aotearoa was sourced from local farms, and it spent $235 million on local produce in 2024, up from $218m in 2023 and $214m in 2022.

It exported more than $287m of local ingredients like beef, cheese and buns to its restaurants in export markets.

Aotearoa was now one of the chain’s top six countries supplying beef for its restaurants globally.

Last year, the American-owned subsidiary used 6000 tonnes of locally-sourced beef for sale domestically, and it exported nearly 30,000 tonnes of it, making up around 10 percent of New Zealand’s total beef exports.

McDonald’s New Zealand’s head of impact and communications Simon Kenny said globally the chain served 70 million people a day, using 2 percent of the world’s beef.

He said price swings locally could have a material impact on the operating costs of its restaurants.

“Like everyone’s seen in the supermarkets, beef’s been one of the biggest ones,” he said. “The beef we’re buying right now is over 20 percent more expensive than it was at the start of the year.”

He said that meant the patty that went into the cheeseburger was 10 cents more expensive than at the start of the year.

“On a product at that kind of cost, it’s a significant input cost that goes up. So yeah, we’re not immune to it.”

StatsNZ data showed food prices increased 4.7 percent in the year to October, and beef was a hotspot of the economy farmers were capitalising on.

Further data revealed meat exports hit $10 billion in the year to October last year, driven by sheepmeat and beef up $625m.

Processor ANZCO in Taranaki’s Waitara made around 500,000 patties a day from local meat supplies, he said.

But Kenny said beef was a commodity it had to buy on the open market.

“Ironically, because of the global demand for beef from other McDonald’s markets, and what we’ve seen this year with the increase in costs… because of those global dynamics, that does impact us domestically.”

He said price increases were considered very carefully, and assured that burger sizes had not changed, as they had global size specifications to stick to.

“McDonald’s is known for value,” Kenny said. “There’s a whole load of costs that we have to factor in to the business with our franchisees every year and then go, okay how do you manage margins but also keep giving customers good value?

“There’s a popular myth that the Big Mac got smaller, and we like to joke that probably your hands got bigger than they were when you were six years old in the ’80s or ’90s.”

He said labour costs for its 10,000 New Zealand staff had also increased.

The subsidiary’s profits saw a 43 percent fall on 2023, to $59,779,000 in 2024, according to company register documents.

The corporate reported it was “facing challenges” in meeting its ambitious scope 3 emissions reduction targets in the latest purpose and impact report.

It wanted to reduce its scope 3 forest, land and agricultural emissions in its value chain by 16 percent off its 2018 baseline of 62,836,186 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide to 52,782,392 megatonnes of carbon dioxide before the end of 2030. It hit 60,245,138 megatonnes in 2024.

It also wanted to maintain no deforestation across its primary deforestation-linked commodities.

But Kenny said New Zealand beef farmers were ahead of many global competitors in this space especially with traceability, even compared to Australia.

“Beef represents when you look at scope 3 emissions, by far the biggest single contributor to our global emissions profile is beef farming.”

He said it was about encouraging sustainable agriculture by ensuring there was best practice on farms, and emissions data and measurement were the first point of call in doing so.

“Actually, New Zealand’s in a really good place when it comes to how we produce beef – we just we have to measure it better and report back better.

“That then helps us report back to our global team and feed into those kind of metrics, versus any radical differences and changes to farming systems.”

Kenny said farmers could “tweak” their systems to improve their impact, like considering regenerative farming principles and other emissions reductions

“I think in the next five years it’s going to be a lot of those kind of tweaks to farming systems and what we already do really well in New Zealand.”

Nearly 50 years ago, in 1976, McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in New Zealand in Porirua.

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