Ploughing Champs success
Sean Leslie and Casey Tilson from Middlemarch, with horses Beau and Dough, took out the Rural News Horse Plough award at the Power Farming NZ Ploughing Championships at Horotiu, near Hamilton, on April 13-14.
The World Ploughing Championships have just concluded in Denmark and New Zealand entrants acquitted themselves well.
Blenheim’s Ian Woolley in the conventional plough division finished eleventh overall, after finishing fifth in the stubble ploughing on the first day and 16th in the grassland ploughing on the second day. He also gained a special prize for the ploughman who finishes highest in his first World Ploughing Championships.
In the reversible ploughing division, Malcolm Taylor of Putaruru finished eighteenth overall, after finishing twentieth in the stubble and sixteenth in the grassland section.
Both the New Zealanders were competing against ploughmen and women from 30 countries.
They will both again represent NZ in the 2016 World Championships at Coventry in the UK.
Meanwhile, Rotorua’s Colin Millar was appointed president of the World Ploughing Organisation. He has been vice president for three years.
Federated Farmers says almost 2000 farmers have signed a petition launched this month to urge the Government to step in and provide certainty while the badly broken resource consent system is fixed.
Zespri’s counter-seasonal Zespri Global Supply (ZGS) programme is underway with approximately 33 million trays, or 118,800 tonnes, expected this year from orchards throughout France, Italy, Greece, Korea, and Japan.
Animal owners can help protect life-saving antibiotics from resistant bacteria by keeping their animals healthy, says the New Zealand Veterinary Association.
According to analysis by the Meat Industry Association (MIA), New Zealand red meat exports reached $827 million in October, a 27% increase on the same period last year.
The black and white coat of Holstein- Friesian cows is globally recognised as a symbol of dairy farming and a defining trait of domestic cattle. But until recently, scientists didn’t know which genes were responsible for the Holstein’s spots.
According to the New Zealand Dairy Statistics 2024/25 report, New Zealand dairy farmers are achieving more with fewer cows.

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