County Councils had holding paddocks strategically situated for overnight rests.
Drivers in vehicles knew how to respect and navigate through large mobs of stock and a lead dog was valued higher than a first born child unless he or she could be trusted to undertake the important role of the dog at the front of the mob.
Those where the days a young man such as myself could only dream about but for the rare occasion a mob of cattle heading from the sale yards in Raetihi to a station on the Paraparas would pass our gate.
Four decades later living here in Ashburton the romance of horse and dog have gone, however the droving has not.
The cattle have changed in colour, stature and breed, they now shift from one milking platform to another or from a runoff to the main block or vice-a-versa.
I still saddle a horse and ride behind a neighbour’s mob for my soul and the horse’s patience and training should the chance occur.
However I think even this cost-effective and often-used way of shifting large numbers of stock will prove to be the undoing of the dairy industry if it continues.
Last week I travelled along a back road here in Ashburton and was held up by a mob of dairy heifers being shifted as they passed by a number of dry cows grazing a water race on the side of the road.
Separating them was nothing more than a three wire electric fence.
Not a steel wire fence but a typical hot wire and steel standards.
This got me thinking about the current risk of spreading Mycoplasma bovis around the country as heifers and cows did what heifers and cows do over a fence.
If my vehicle had spooked the mob on the road and mixed them up, sorting would have taken an hour or so, no problem.
But what would happen if in a weeks’ time or a month one of the herds was found to be infected?
Even if not mixed up the risk of spreading the disease by passing along the road and licking each other over the fence is one risk this country does not need.
MPI says it’s the owner’s responsibility to protect their own herd.
I ask those with a road frontage – who has a two metre buffer fence holding their mob off the road fence right now?
It needs to be permanent as often during the year mobs are moved during mating, grazing and property shifts take place.
Who of you that shifts cattle check the route to see if there are any issues and warns farmers of your need to pass by?
Let’s face it we all have a road gate to protect the wife’s garden from herds moving along the road for fear of the wrath that should follow if her roses get trampled, but have we, as moving day approaches, protected our herds?
MPI tells us they believe they have M bovis contained to the original herds and their traceability around the country.
Some in the industry believe the disease has already been here and has already seen a gypsy day.
That’s a debate for another day but what does need talking about is what we need to do in preparation for the high numbers of stock about to walk our road again on June 1.
I implore you to take action on this issue yourselves, MPI are struggling to lock this disease down before June, and if this disease is to be contained we can’t take the risk.
We have to hope MPI is right and M bovis is new to our shores.
The message is simply to take care of your own herds.
So again I say be warned and due diligence is your only defence.
I hope we can talk about how we eradicated this disease in the future with the same pride I talk about my grandfather being the last of the real drovers, but I fear we will be talking about how easy we spread it from one side of the country to the other.
Let us hope eradication and not management is still being talked about before the cups go on next season.
