Guy Trafford sees new requirements coming for pain relief for lamb tailing. He is also seeing signs that dairy milk production is heading for lower levels

One of New Zealand’s good-news stories regarding wool, The New Zealand Merino Company, told its farmer suppliers that by June 2025 it will require pain relief to be administered at tailing (docking).

Mulesing (removing skin from around the rear end of lambs) has been illegal for some years and was not widely used in New Zealand so banning it wasn’t a problem. However, providing pain relief at tailing at first glance will be considerably more difficult to accommodate.

Currently New Zealand regulations are fairly relaxed and in line with Australia’s. The MPI leaflet guidelines require that pain relief is (only) required after the animal is 6 months of age when a veterinarian must perform the operation. This is perhaps surprising given New Zealand was considerably ahead of Australia in banning mulesing and live shipments; both which have been banned here for welfare issues. (The UK only allows for lambs under 1 week of age to be tailed or castrated without anaesthetic.)

The issue for New Zealand farmers, particularly those farming merinos’ is that isolation and access may make it more difficult to tail lambs when they are that young and there is also the issue of mismothering lambs (when they lose their mother) when they are mobbed up at a young age. Leaving tails on is increasingly (judged by saleyard observations) becoming an option for many (non-merino) farmers. However given the propensity of merinos to get fly-strike and the more hands-off approach high country farming requires, this is not an option for them.

For those who do not want the arguably added management requirements of leaving lambs long-tailed then there is a new innovation on the market. Called Numnuts (this is not an advert for the product as the ease or otherwise of use is totally unknown or the cost). A Scottish development, it incorporates an anaesthetic injection with the ring applicator. It was introduced in Australia in 2019 and here in New Zealand in December 2022, so yet to be tested. However, one report has said that 200,000 doses have been sold in Australia so even at the advertised 67 cents per dose (x 2 if being tailed and castrated) uptake seems to be reasonably rapid.

The New Zealand Merino Company are also seeking to have anaesthetic used on severe shearing cuts and the like. While farmers may see all this as another imposition and cost onto their farming systems it is inevitable as night follows day that consumers at some point will require ethical systems especially around welfare issues. And with the advent of a potential means to improve animal welfare then farmers will find this difficult to push back against. The UK does not yet require the use of Numnuts. However, there is an expectation that it soon will and if that occurs it is even more likely that pressure will be applied on exporting countries to meet the same levels.

Lower milk production

Also making some news recently is the report from LIC that the number of dry cows (not in calf) has increased this year by 1.4% to 17.6% after a 4 year period of fairly static rates (16%). This years lift, which occurred largely in the North Island, has been put down to the adverse weather conditions last year leading up to and through mating. When the numbers are just put over the mixed aged component of the herd (which is where the number comes from) the rate jumps up to around 25%.

This compares to 19% dry in the UK, which also recognises it has a problem, although it was unclear whether this was the total herd or just the mixed age component.

For dairy farms these high rates imposes huge costs with the losses of higher producing cows to be replaced by a higher percentage of lower (initially) producing heifers.

Some farmers buy these cull cows and take them through a season unmilked (carry-over cows) to be mated and re-enter the herd as a higher producing animal than a heifer would the following year.

Due to their generally better condition after a ‘year off’ they often produce better than the equivalent mixed aged cows.

So, bearing this in mind - that is, more dry cows available and therefore what would be expected to be a greater demand for replacements - it was a little surprising to see that recently as the dry cows are culled from their farms and enter the sale market the price of quality cows at clearing sales has been observed to be dropping by around $1,000, from $3,000 down to $2,000 per cow.

Any conclusions at this stage will be purely speculative but it does make one wonder if this means that there is a general reduction in cow numbers occurring.

We have seen numbers on a downward trend over the last few years but even with that occurring, cow prices were holding, at least at relative to current prices. In addition, LIC surmises that the loss of the extra cows from the herd could lead the dairy industry to be facing a 2.7 million kilogram milksolid production shortfall next spring.