When I visited Southland sheep breeder Leon Black, we took a drive to inspect sheep in one of his paddocks. Hands stuck in his pockets, he looked out over 200 plump ewes and let out a loud: “Baa.”
The ewes immediately lifted their heads, “baa-ed” back, and walked towards him. When he walked away, they followed.
Black told me he often moved his sheep considerable distances by simply walking out in front of them. No dogs needed.
When I walked closer to take a photo, they retreated and gave him a “who’s this guy” look.
READ MORE:
* Concerns raised over inadequate shade and water in stockyards
* South Canterbury lifestyle farmer fined $17,500 for starving and ill-treating sheep
* Southland farmers fined after more than 100 cows suffer broken tails
After a decade of covering farming, people like Black are my frame of reference for how livestock are treated by farmers.
But every few weeks, reports pop up on the Ministry for Primary Industries website of prosecutions of farmers under the Animal Welfare Act, of fines and infringement notices. So what’s going on?
Some cases read like horror stories.
One of the latest MPI reports was of a grazing and calf rearing company, and former employees, fined $95,000 for the death of hundreds of calves. Before the deaths, warnings from veterinarians about the calves’ condition were ignored.
Or a farmer put under two years’ intensive supervision for breaking the tails of 136 cows. He said he was under time pressure and that he had bent the tails while pushing the cows in the milking shed.
Or a case of livestock simply starving to death because they did not have enough feed.
In the last year, MPI has prosecuted 32 farmers. In 2021, it issued 492 infringement notices to farmers and 298 to companies, and gave 83 written warnings.
Succession facilitator Mandi McLeod has dealt with animal welfare issues in the course of her job.
She says one of the first signs that can confirm a younger hand is needed, is an animal welfare issue.
McLeod says farmers are entrepreneurs and that people with entrepreneurial personalities find it difficult to accept it when their physical capabilities are going backwards.
When she sees a tie between farmer age and animal welfare issues, it is because basic farm management is suffering, fences not kept, and basic production principles have gone out the window.
These days everything is linked, she says. The way we manage the environment is linked to how we manage animals and linked to how we manage people.
MPI national manager for animal welfare Gray Harrison says there have been several prosecutions over the past year of older farmers.
However, considering the average age of a sheep and beef farmer in New Zealand is around 60, and the average of dairy farmers is around 50, this is not surprising.
In the last 12 months, the age of farmers prosecuted ranges from 30 to 84 years old.
There are many reasons why farming people come to the attention of the ministry, Harrison says.
They include financial instability, a lack of experience with managing animals, physical or mental health issues, or significant weather events such as prolonged drought or flooding.
MPI considers education and prevention effective ways to ensure animals are being properly looked after, Harrison says.
Depending on the severity of the situation, it often means directing a farmer to do simple animal care tasks like drenching or shearing, giving supplementary feed, or finding veterinary help.
In severe cases, an animal would be humanely euthanised. If the MPI found evidence of deliberate neglect or animal cruelty, it would likely lead to prosecution.
Harrison says the most common animal welfare complaints MPI investigates are of animals in poor body condition, usually caused by underfeeding, a lack of access to water, problems with animals grazing in mud, and a lack of veterinary care.
When Harrison first told me that educating someone often solved the problem I didn’t believe her. How could someone who callously mistreats animals change their ways?
But then I thought back a few years to when I volunteered at a sheep dog trial. I was supposed to move sheep from a holding paddock into an area where sheep dogs could prove their abilities.
All was going smoothly until one sheep refused to move. I panicked, grabbed two handfuls of wool, and pushed it.
A farmer who was watching the trials walked up to me and said, “if you do that you bruise their skin, even if you can’t see it”.
He then showed me how to move behind livestock, so they move without having to be handled. I was embarrassed about my uneducated behaviour and the lesson stuck with me.
Neil Bateup, chair of the Rural Support Trust, says when there is an animal welfare issue on a farm, there are usually mental health issues behind it.
People who suffer from mental illness, like depression, can have difficulty making decisions and this often has animal welfare effects, Bateup says.
He says cases of mental health issues are increasing on farms. Throw in a drought or flood, and the inability to make decisions becomes a problem fast. But he says any bad apple purposely ill treating animals need to be prosecuted.
I have never met a farmer that neglected their animals. But I have seen it.
I once volunteered on a farm. The farmer and I were retrieving his sheep from the neighbour’s property. The neighbour had neglected fences so much that sheep crossed between the farms.
On the neighbouring farm we found a number of sheep carcasses in various states of decomposition. The neighbour was nowhere.
The farmer I was with was disgusted. I don’t think he took any action, I didn’t either. But the incident was talked about over coffee with others. The level of disgust was palpable.
McLeod believes that, among those callous enough to mistreat animals, there is a large cohort of older farmers just not aware of what their behaviour means. They believe they have a sovereign right to treat animals in any way they like, because they are their property
The younger generation are mostly different, she says. A lot of it comes down to whether people believe animals are sentient or not.
She attended a dairy cow welfare conference in the US in 2019. The conference was attended by farmers, veterinarians, university students and representatives from academia. A poll on sentience showed almost 50% of attendees did not believe animals had the capacity to feel pain, distress or suffering.
McLeod has also found that on farms where there were breakdowns, people operated in silos with no outside support.
When she looked at a farm’s books, those who got a bad rap for livestock handling, often also had financial challenges they could not overcome.
The public views on farmers were skewed, because city-dwellers didn’t understand the level of skill needed to run a profitable farming business, she said.
McLeod says good stewards of livestock don’t see their animals as a number, but as the reason for doing what they do.
Good handling and increased level of productivity are linked, with a general awareness of animal health tied to more profits. The way animals are treated has a ripple effect, with people who treated animals better feeling better and doing better.
When you ask farmers about these issues, it sometimes brings tension to the room.
Farmers who neglect animals are a tiny percentage of the group, they say. But negative stories about them spread to taint the rest of the industry.
Stats NZ numbers show that in 2019 there were 49,530 farms in New Zealand.
Andrew Burtt, Beef and Lamb New Zealand chief economist, says, based on StatsNZ data, there are 9165 commercial sheep and beef farms in 2017. This does not include smallholdings.
Dairy NZ figures show there are about 11,000 dairy farms, with 37,000 people working on them.
The number of prosecutions, infringement notices and warnings, when weighed up against the official farm and farmer numbers, show only a small percentage of farmers not caring for their livestock.
Farmers say no one sees the countless winter nights they might stay awake, hand-feeding lambs rejected by their mothers.
Often, when one farmer does something disgusting, the public immediately thinks all of them act in this way. It is not how other industries are treated, farmers say.
I did a Google search for one of the companies MPI ga ve an almost $100,000 fine to.
Their website looked flash. I phoned but no-one picked up. I phoned again, and spoke to a man who sounded tired when he heard what I was asking about. There were long pauses before he answered any of my questions. His voice was almost a whisper.
He said I had the wrong company. He referred me to the one in question. His surname matched that of the owners.
I phoned. The farmer I wanted to talk to was no longer a board member.
It was the same with another company. They just seem to disappear.
© 2022 Stuff Limited