Ewe numbers have fallen in nine of the past 10 surveys and are down 24% for the decade.
Beef cow numbers have fallen in seven of the past 10 surveys and are down 17% over the decade.
For sheep and beef farmers, meat processors and exporters, plus a sector full of farm and meat workers, rural professionals, rural suppliers and even real estate agents, the continual decline in livestock numbers has many implications.
A country that in comparatively recent times had 70 million sheep and 10m cattle, the majority of them beef cattle, was sparsely populated on census date June 30 with 31m sheep and 3.7m beef cattle, the latest Economic Service survey reported.
On the positive side of the ledger the NZ dairy cow herd has increased from two million to 4.75m over three decades, more than doubling the need for dry-stock grazing and the potential to take dairy bull calves into the beef herd.
The productivity of the smaller ewe flock is also much better than it was when skinny sheep roamed the hills.
At different times during the past decade commentators have looked at the livestock numbers and declared “this is the bottom” for the sheep and beef sector.
But as for the United States cattle herd, a discernible rebuilding phase hasn’t begun.
The decline has in the past been attributed to changing land use into dairying and forestry, poor meat and wool returns, the reversion to scrub of steeper hill country to combat erosion and aging farm owners.
But this year the blame lies with the widespread drought last summer and autumn in the North Island and the West Coast of the South Island.
The most startling number in this year’s stock survey is the predicted two million drop in lambs to be born this spring, which will drag lamb processing down to 18m in the 2013-14 season.
An industry that has twice the processing capacity needed to handle the export lamb numbers will be squeezed further and will have to compete more vigorously for the lambs available from farmers.
However, this is not a result of lack of confidence or an outlook of low prices, but drought in the North Island in autumn, which caused poor condition in ewes at mating and lowered the lambing percentage.
B+LNZ expects the national average lambing percentage to fall 6-7% and each percentage point represents 200,000 lambs.
Pregnancy scanning results indicated a reduction of 10-15% in the upper North Island, steady percentages in the middle of the country and a drop of 5% in Otago-Southland.
In the year to June 30 breeding ewe numbers in the North Island fell 2.7% to 9.52m and in the South Island they increased 0.5% to 10.69m. Nationally, sheep numbers fell 1% to 30.94m, of which ewes were 20.21m.
The number of beef cattle in the North Island fell 2.5% and increased 1.8% in the South Island, while the national total was down 1.3% to 3.69m.
The north had 65% of the 1.05m breeding cows. In the north running dairy-beef bulls is more popular than in the south, accounting for a significant part of the two million cattle that are not cows.
The south had 1.09m total cattle, of which cows were 0.38m, up 2.4%.
The drought-induced fall in sheep numbers was most pronounced on the East Coast, down 3.9%, and in Northland-Waikato-Bay of Plenty, down 1.9%.
But the northernmost region suffered the largest loss of breeding ewes, down 100,000, which was a 3.8% reduction in the number of ewes put to the ram in autumn.
Along with the substantial reduction in pregnancy scanning results, the lamb drop in the upper North Island may be down 450,000, a share of 20% of the forecast national decline, although the region contains only 12% of the national flock.
The double effect of a reduced number of ewes mated and the lower pregnancy rate will also hit the East Coast region hard.
B+LNZ observed two different responses to more dairy farm conversions in South Island regions.
In Marlborough-Canterbury ewe numbers stayed steady, by increasing flock sizes on the hill farm classes with the majority of sheep.
“Ewe numbers decreased sharply on mixed cropping and finishing farms on the Canterbury Plains as land use change, irrigation development, and further dairy expansion continued to place pressure on sheep and beef farming,” the survey report said.
By contrast, ewe numbers in Southland fell 2.2% because of intensification, conversion to dairying, and greater demand for dairy grazing.
Among the cattle numbers the most startling figure was a fall of 11% in breeding cows in the Taranaki-Manawatu region because of the impact of the drought earlier this year.
B+LNZ predicted the calving numbers nationwide to be similar to that of spring last year.
