Dry to bite lamb crop

 With mating only weeks away, ewe condition is below normal in many areas and fresh feed for flushing scarce to non-existent.

“I expect ewe bodyweight will be back at mating and there won’t be the number of hoggets mated this autumn,” Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s economic manager for the region, John Holmes, says.

“People might have to cut into their capital [stock] numbers from here on in too, if they haven’t already started to do so.”

Consequently, there would “definitely” be an impact on next season’s production, though putting a figure on that now is hard to do, he says.

BLNZ economic service data shows Marlborough and Canterbury produced 4.7m lambs (18%) of the national crop in 2014 – second only to the North Island East Coast with 6m (24%) of the drop. 

Holmes says with hindsight, forecasts for 2015 fed into BLNZ’s Mid Season Outlook report this week are too high. “It’s based on what we did at the start of February. At that point it looked like it was turning a bit, but they were still fairly low.”

The drought has “just deepened really” in the four weeks since that data was collected and Holmes says he’d revise the figures if doing them again.

The next four weeks will be “absolutely critical too” as time is running out for rain to save dryland winter feed crops and revive burnt off pasture. “There’s only so long before winter and the ground getting cold, and you don’t get any growth even if it does rain.”

Holmes’ North Island East Coast colleague Amanda Bowie declined to comment on whether the dry there had reached the point of affecting next season’s lambing, but she admitted rain is needed “ASAP so we can grow autumn feed to get us through the winter. Whatever is in the ground needs a drink.”

On February 12, Minister for Primary Industries Nathan Guy declared the drought a medium-scale adverse event east of the Southern Alps from Central Otago to Marlborough and said Wairarapa was “on watch”. 

Last week, his office said there was no plan to extend the area to include Wairarapa but the minister was “still keeping a close eye” on the situation.

Federated Farmers Meat and Fibre chairman in Mid Canterbury, Mike Salvesen, says the foothills and high country, which carry most of the region’s breeding flocks, are not so bad as to affect next season’s output. “But in South Canterbury it’s a different story and we’re not as bad as North Canterbury either.”

His counterpart to the north, Dan Hodgen, say with rams due out in a week or two, if not already, there’s bound to be an impact on next spring’s lambing. “It’s going to roll over to next season. It’s just a question of how much.”