NO CATTLE FEED

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 59, Issue 261, 6 December 1930, Page 3

NO CATTLE FEED

HARD COND1TIONS THROUGHOUT HAWKE'S BAY. FARMERS FEEL ANXIETY. DEMAND FROM OTHER DISTRICTS Hawke's Bay as a wliole, with the single exceptioli of the Wairoa district, is distinctly short of cattle feed at tlie present time, and those farmers who are fairly well stocked with cattle are going to have a job to carry them on unless we get some feed sliortly. The best evidence of the conditions ruling in the province in this respect is to be found at our Hawke's Bay saies of store cattle. Tlie beasts entered are for the most part in hard, poor condition, as evidence of the conditions under which they are existing in the province just now, and at tliese saies the only demand conies from outside sources or from buyers who truck to outside districts. Grazing for cattle takes a lot of finding in Hawke's Bay just now. There was a certain amount of cattle feed in Soutliem Hawke's Bay up until a month or two ago, but conditions up there are as bad now as they are down this end of the province. On the southern East Coast they are even worse off in this respect. O11 a recent trip through that area 1 noticed that the condiion of the cattle on the stations was lor the most part worse than farther down the line. As an instance of the conditions ruling out on some of the coastal properties, I was talking to one runholder who told me that while in a normal season he would run between 700 and' 800 cattle 011 liis property, this year he had only about 400 and still was going to have difficulty in carrymg them through. This shortage of cattle feed is going to give rise to a very serious position in Hawke's Bay unless we get the right sort of weather' to bring tlie grass growth away within the next few weeks. Rain and sunshine in combination are the main factors which are going to work _ Hawke's Bay's salvation in the immediate future, and wliafever happens in tlie next few weeks, the results of tlie baclfward season will most certainly he felt in the coming Winter. Conditions in Hawke's Bay have had an effect 011 Gisborne cattle saies. At the last Matawhero cattle fair, the market was £1 a head down on the previous cattle fair, anu had it not been for the presence of Waikato buyers, there would have been _ praetically 110 demand, although as it was the market was at the mercy of offers from tliese men. Few cattle were bought for holding locallv, and tlie i'eed shortage in Hawke's Bay was refiected in the fact that not one Hawke's Bay buyer was operating.