August 7, 2012

New Zealand's sheep, cattle numbers up

New Zealand's sheep numbers increase 2.6% and beef cattle numbers increase 1.0% for the year to June 30, 2012.

The Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) Economic Service Executive Director, Rob Davison says this partly makes up for a 4.4% decline in sheep and a 2.6% decline in beef cattle the year before. But while sheep numbers were up 2.6% most of this increase will be stock carried over for slaughter in July-September. B+LNZ says Breeding ewe numbers at 20.61 million are almost static (+0.6%) on the previous June when ewe numbers fell 6% to a low of 20.49 million.

Strong mutton prices earlier in the year encouraged a high slaughter of cull ewes for the second year in a row. The offset to this was a high retention of ewe hoggets (+10%) last July which by June 30, 2012 were mature first time in lamb ewes. The 2012 lamb crop could be up on last spring by one million lambs (+4%). This outcome would lift the ewe flock performance measured by lambing percentage to around the highest achieved, which in 2009-10 was 123%. Beef cattle numbers increased 1% to 3.88 million and partly reversed the 2.6% decline for the previous year. It's estimated the dairy herd increased 3.2% with part of this increase a carry-over of older cows in the North Island due to excellent growing conditions.