Ian McCall President NZ Poll Dorset Breed Committee.

Greetings to you all, from Poll Dorset NZ. As part of our breeder’s annual levies the NZ breed committee decided to give each flock, your Poll Dorset Magazine. We thank you for the opportunity to contribute to it as well.

Covid 19 has had a major impact on New Zealand, although, maybe not quite as much as in Australia, the social and financial fallout will be felt for many years to come. During the lock down farming was obviously an essential industry so we were able to continue pretty much as normal. It did put some pressure on our feed supplies as at that time of year, autumn early winter, we have to reduce our stock numbers down to our minimum but unfortunately our processing plants were only able to operate at 50 to 60% capacity when they would normally be at, near full capacity.

Unfortunately, the Canterbury show has been cancelled for this year it, is our major shop window to see some of the up and coming sires of the future and of course a great opportunity to catch up with fellow breeders from both sides of the Tasman. All our smaller district, spring shows are still on and hopefully they will have bigger entries than normal.

There has been a silver lining, to covid and that is the realisation by many, including Government, as to how important agriculture is to the NZ economy

As I write this some of our early country will be starting to get into lambing and most will be done over the next couple of months although, we have only just done our scanning and won’t be lambing until October.

It is with great pleasure that I extend our congratulations to Graham Day for receiving The Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. It is good that excellence and effort, in agriculture, is honoured in both our countries, considering the contribution it makes to the GDP.

I wish the Australian breeders all the best for their upcoming ram sales, from the photos I have seen on social media there is some very exciting young sires for sale again this year and of the type that would also suit most breeding programs in NZ. We are still able to import genetics from Australia.

To our NZ breeders we are heading into spring, we have new life, new hope, the flood’s, the drought, of last season are behind us. I wish everyone all the best for a prosperous and satisfying year ahead.