The Sheep Farmer Was at the

Mercy of Natural Forces

OTHER sheep farmers were less fortunate, and losses from scab were enormous. Even if a flock escaped infection, avoiding it made farming more expensive. Boundaries were rarely fenced in those days. Any traveler across the plains would every few miles come across an unlucky dog tied up in the wilderness for the benefit of its barking. These were boundary dogs, designed to frighten wander­ing sheep back into their own runs. If there were no natural boundary, like a river or a range of high, craggy mountains, the shepherds tailed the sheep all day to make sure they never made con­tact with their neighbor’s flocks, or worse, with sheep passing through the open run.

Another source of sheep losses was the tutu scrub. This looked very appetising, but it poisoned sheep or cattle which ate it on an empty stomach.

Bad snow storms carried off numbers of stock nearer the mountains. ‘Smothers or solid jams of sheep in some narrow gut entailed further losses. Interest rates of ten or twelve per cent did not make it easy to survive these chances. Moreover, someone who liked rabbit pie or an afternoon’s sport, imported rabbits in the late fifties. Three generations of New Zealanders have cursed him since.

A lighter cross the squatter had to bear was the habit, common to stock, of wandering away in the unfenced landscape. Samuel Butler had trouble with his bullocks. Guthrie-Smith describes with wry humour the conduct of a homesick mob of newly-bought sheep on the unfenced fern uplands of northern Hawke’s Bay.