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Animals

Animals and animal farming have changed a lot over the past 90 years.

For about 80 years most people were farmers and farmers only had farm animals including dogs.
Some people had cats and a few people had pet dogs.

Horses back then were used for:
• transport
• riding into town

• school and deliveries
• messages and herding (sheep and cattle)
• farm jobs like ploughing and mowing.
The most common breed of horses were Clydesdales. Kids rode to school on horses. Some little kids rode on Shetland ponies.

Dogs were very helpful around the place. The most common types of farm dogs were the eye dog because of its hypnotizing power, huntaway because it has such a deep bark and the NZ heading dog because of its fitness. Farm dogs always work as a team of about 2 or 3. New Zealand had over 200,000 farm dogs.

Lots of people who lived in Tauriko had little dairy farms of about 5-10 cows. They had these small amounts because they had to milk them by hand. Now people have over 100 because of machine milking.

Country schools 80 years ago had agriculture day just as we have now this means hand rearing and training a calf or lamb [sometimes goats] to bring to school and win prizes. You will have to have a bond with the animal.

Lots of people had a pig farm for meat but this died out in about 1967.

Sheep farming has fallen from 70 million in 1918 to 38 million in 2006. Lots of people in Tauriko had sheep on their farms, these were normally Merino. Merinos were bought because of their fine wool.

As you can see animals 80 years ago have changed, dairy farmers now have more cows and farms usually have just one or two types of animals.

By Paige and Talia

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