Weather bomb hits stock sale numbers
The snow took its toll on stock numbers at the Feilding store stock sale in Manawatu.
A weather bomb hitting Manawatu and Rangitikei last week brought snow to farms above 300 metres.
Other farms had plenty of rain and some roads were flooded.
As a result last Friday’s Feilding sale attracted far lower than usual stock numbers as the weather stopped stock trucks in their tracks.
PGG Wrightson said about a quarter of the stock usually on sale made it to the saleyards.
Carrfields said they had about 10 per cent of stock usually on offer.
A total of about 2400 sheep and 100 cattle were sold.
Stock from Hunterville, Rangiwahia and Taihape were snowed in. Other potential sellers faced flooding and those with wet ground were unable to muster.
Stock agents said there were few people buying at the sale from Hawke’s Bay, and they usually underpinned bidding at the sale.
Hawke’s Bay farms were too wet to take on further stock.
Stock agents expected a big store stock sale at Feilding later this week, as a result of the poor showing today.
Many farmers said the snowfalls were the worst they had seen.
Bulls farmer and farm forester, Denis Hocking said there had been no snow at his Rangitikei property, but it was really wet on the farm, and there had been a cold wind in the usually ‘‘subtropical’’ sand country.
’’There have been no damaging winds and no tree damage, and we have only had about 40 millilitres of rain last week, though the amount of standing water would suggest much more.’’’
He said the first calf arrived on Thursday in the middle of the wintry blast.
There were a few early calves on dairy farms but they were in sheds.
Hocking lambs earlier than most farmers.
‘‘It is easy to get shelter from the southerly in sand country.
‘‘But rain stuffed up my ewe rotation as I planned to put them back on to heavy soils [they are too wet] and with this cold weather, I am very grateful for good supply of silage.’’
Kiwitea farmer and Federated farmers vice chairman, Andrew Hoggard said their property had received slushy snow.
‘‘Everything is pretty damn wet and sodden. I had all the cows off
We have saturated paddocks across the region, everything was already fairly wet. If we keep getting cloudy wet days we could be in for a miserable spring. Andrew Hoggard
their normal paddocks and just in drier, more sheltered paddocks. Even they were getting a bit slushy.
‘‘I have been fully feeding cows on supplements in the wet and snow. I plan to hold the cows on their standoff areas till the rain has stopped, then off to their paddocks.’’
Hoggard said his big concern was the amount of moisture Manawatu and Rangitikei had received.
‘‘We have saturated paddocks across the region, everything was already fairly wet. If we keep getting cloudy wet days going forward we could be in for a miserable spring.’’
He said thankfully everyone had plenty supplement feed on hand.
‘‘But that can be churned through fairly quickly when you have to go at higher rates to make up for poor utilisation due to wet paddocks. Thankfully for us we have only a couple of premature calves to deal with. And we are not due to start calving for another two weeks.
‘‘So hopefully it drys up a bit before then, but the forecast doesn’t hold a lot of promise for that.’’