But IS this the tip of the iceberg for NZ?
Even as a true blue NZ sheep station-reared lassie, I would have to say our attitude and treatment of our livestock only just makes it across the thin red line.

We treat our animals as commodities, extrapolating the last vestiges of strength they have to raise not one but three lambs, squeeze the last drop of milk from a grossly distorted udder, shave the inth degree of antler from a head that can never rest under shade; deprive our chooks from ever breathing simple fresh air; and crate our sows like Henry Ford’s Model T production line.

To add insult to injury, we cram them in to trucks like prisoners going to the concentration camps and, well, what to you know, they arrive at the ‘camp’, thirsty, tired, shit-covered with fear, having every reason to be stressed to the max.

Time to Change
The 'Best Practice' Award — a title enjoyed by very few veterinarians, indicative of hard work, excellent skills, good management, happy staff and client satisfaction. Could we apply this paradigm to:

ENVIRONMENTAL BEST-PRACTICE FROM PADDOCK TO PLATE
A colleague, who is very much involved in the food industry, proposed all stock be killed at their place of rearing. It would not take too much in the way of setting up such a practice. Yet when we mentioned it on a talk-back show recently there were howls of rage (mostly from the highly paid slaughtermen who could see their 6 months paid holiday going down the sludge pit).

In the new economic paradigm, large abattoirs have no place if we are to consider the health of all concerned first and foremost, and that means delivering food that has been, in itself, nourished from its beginnings.

We could start by reducing energy input and chemicals, breeding flocks and herds that do the job themselves. For example mothers should be mothers — let cows rear their own calves. That hand rearing policy is one dreamt up by men to keep their wives away from the shopping centres and has no economic justification whatsoever.

• Breed for resistance to eczema and parasites, instead of resistance to chemicals.
• Set - grazed stock select pasture for their health, rotational grazed stock select pasture to survive.
• Breed for survival of the fittest, not fit to survive to breed.

Tall Trees Tell Tales — is grass ‘grassing’ too?
Some species of trees, under threat of being eaten to death, emit chemicals into the air to warn other trees to ‘up their anti’ against munching animals. Alert trees thus increase their tannin to unpalatable levels. Anyone who has stood in a heavily grazed paddock can sense the odour wafting in the air.

Fly Strike – a pesky problem
Fly Strike is the bane of many a farmer, be it lifestyle block or settlers of old. There have been as many remedies suggested as there are sheep on the hills.

• Shearing – crutching / dagging often.
• Pasture management — sweet smelling pasture means sweet smelling wool.
• Sprays of eucalyptus, pennyroyal and Teatree oil.
• Homeopathic combination of sabadilla, silica, calendula, caladium, sulphur.
Or Maggot, Fly, Australian Green Fly, Lice.
• Choose your breeds carefully (Wiltshires instead of Romneys)
• Breeding wool-less sheep especially around the perineum and tail-less stock.

A 1921 Edition on veterinary home doctoring suggested ‘fly-stone’ which is a convenient lump of corrosive sublimate (elsewhere called perchloride of mercury), and with this rub the spot writhing with maggots. It is instant death to them, and has no greater objection than the destruction of the wool roots in that portion of the skin’ — I wonder how animal welfare views the ‘greater objection’.

And further goes on to say “a mixture of one part of turpentine and thereof olive oil answers the purpose quite well… the most popular of fly oils is composed of carbolic acid one part, rose-coloured oil ten parts,… this both kills the maggots, protects the spot and assists it to heal up”.

So there you are — old fashioned it may be but at some stage it must have worked.

Another olde book, (the printed date is erased with use) so old it is almost written in biblical style 'The Illustrated Stock Doctor and Live Stock Encyclopaedia' suggests that prevention is ‘cleanliness’ (!)

"Keep the sheep well tagged, that is shear the wool from under the sides of the tail, and diagonally thence, some ways down the thighs. Take out the maggots and touch the wound with; 1 part creosote, 4 parts alcohol. And afterwards bathed daily, until relieved, with tincture of myrrh.”

Myrrh can just about overcome anything!

Does Fonterra test for chemical residue in the milk?

I noticed a particular dairy herd being fed corn that had just been sprayed with Roundup to kill the foliage off; apparently this is common practice.(!?)

A farmer should live as though he were going
to die tomorrow; but he should farm as though
he were going to live forever.”