Category: Country

Source: Radio New Zealand

Organisers of a long-standing North Island working dog auction are in disbelief after $320,000 changed hands at their latest sale.

With sheep farming riding a wave of record lamb prices and strong international demand, buyers arrived at the auction near Whanganui last Saturday with extra money in their back pockets.

Hundreds attended the annual Parapara-Makirikiri Sheep Dog Trial Club auction held on a rural property near Whangaehu which featured more than 60 dogs up for sale.

Inclement weather on the day did little to slow the bidding.

Fierce competition pushed heading dog Trix to the top price of $12,200, bettering last year’s best by nearly $3000.

The top huntaway Mufasa from Taihape’s Peter Wilson sold for $10,500 – with the young farmer selling three more prized working dogs Spud, Shaggy and Queen. This topped last year’s top huntaway of $9800.

And in a strong run of prices, seven huntaways and two heading dogs sold for at least $9000 on Saturday.

Club spokesperson Brenda O’Leary said the scale of the prices had taken organisers by surprise.

“People can’t believe how much money we have turned over at the sale,” she said.

“There’s a shortage of quality farm dogs.”

O’Leary attributed some of the success of the sale to farmers having less time to break dogs in.

And top-priced Twix certainly fitted the bill.

She was described in the run down as “honest, good natured, easy to work and have around”.

Mufasa meanwhile was also fully broken in and “a nice powerful dog”.

Wilson conceded it could be hard to let dogs go to a new owner.

“I’m pretty adamant that these dogs have to go to a good home. At the end of the day they’re good mates of mine,” Wilson said.

“They do a lot for you. But when someone’s paying top dollar like they have been, they’ve got to look after them.”

On average huntaways fetched higher prices with an average of $6500.

That pipped the heading dogs average of $4700.

The event is run as a fundraiser for the Parapara-Makirikiri Sheep Dog Trial Club. O’Leary said the auction entry fee of $150 per dog will now help with the club’s running costs. She said most of the funds will be used to host their annual hill country trial held at Parikino which includes the cost of getting sheep to the trial.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/elite-working-dogs-fetch-more-than-300000-in-auction-frenzy-2/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Canterbury arable farmers are facing millions of dollars of losses after a third big hail storm hit parts of the region on Friday.

Crops have been destroyed, while others have gone to seed due to ongoing wet weather making them unusable.

Federated Farmers Arable chair David Birkett who grows crops like wheat, barley and vegetable seeds in Leeston just south of Christchurch said growers should be harvesting but are sitting on their hands.

“We should be in the thick of harvest but we are sitting here waiting for the weather to improve, since Christmas we’ve gone from a typical hot, dry Canterbury summer to really wet weather with plenty of hail storms coming through.

“Normally we’d have three or four a year but we’ve had about 12 so far this year already, three being really hard-hitting ones which have wiped out entire crops.”

Birkett said the hail was very localised – one grower could have lost everything while next door was totally fine.

“Some hail damage has wiped out entire fields, which is devastating for the growers because for some it’s the second or third season where they’ve lost crops, so cash flow is getting tight.

He said the cost of the hail storms this year had totalled $10 million in Canterbury alone.

“The frustrating thing is that the crop was looking really good this season and now some of it’s not usable.”

The point was that growers had already spent all the money on the crop, so when it was ruined they lost all that income, he said.

Another arable farmer RNZ spoke to said the losses were putting a lot of strain on finances.

“It’s not just the hail, the ongoing wet weather means we can’t harvest and the quality of the crop is going down. My milling wheat won’t make the quality grade, so I will have to sell it as feed wheat for the dairy industry, so I’ll lose about $100 a tonne.”

Birkett said there was no rain in the forecast this week, but temperatures remained low, so it could take a week for the crops to dry out enough to be harvested.

“While other parts of the ag sector like dairy and sheep and beef farmers are doing well, arable farmers are really struggling.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/26/farmers-frustrated-by-canterburys-recent-bad-weather/