AUCKLAND SHEEP RETURNS

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2298, 17 September 1908, Page 2

AUCKLAND SHEEP RETURNS

A PROMISING OUTLOOK. [Special to “Times.”] AUCKLAND; Sept. 16. The number of sheep in Auckland •is steadily, increasing, although the Counties of Cook and AVaiapu are statistically lost to Auckland, as far as land returns are concerned, they having been, for some inscrutable reason, added on. to Hawke’s Bay, and they contain two million sheep. But without them Auckland had 785,710 sheep in 1907, and at the end of April :!ast, when the sheep census closed, it had 922,807, an increase in one year of 128,097. Since April, •however, over forty thousand more sheep have come in, so that the country is being stocked .at a fairly rapid rate. Moreover, the percentage of lambs this season throughout the province is very high, and tho Auckland Farmers’ Freezing Company is looking forward to .a better season than last. Considering the heavy demand of the greatest local market in New Zealand, and the requirements pf the freezing industry,, Auckland is nothing like stocked with sheep, hut great hope is centred in the influence that the Gislvorne-Rotorua stock track will have in enabling pstoralists to procure a steady supply of- store sheep.