Farmers who remember the worst outbreaks of facial eczema in Hawke's Bay can't see it ever getting as bad, but no one's taking any chances.
That was the case for Okawa farmer Selwyn Dorward who recalls younger days as a shepherd on a farm further south when the scourge hit the Bay with a vengeance in the 1970s.
It was about 42 years ago, he said yesterday as he and three others helped prepare sheep for the Taradale Sheep Dog Trials, which bring to an end the 2016 season in the Hawke's Bay Sheep Dog trial season over the next two days.
The property on which he was working lost as many as a third of the 6000 ewes on the property at the time, and several farms were devastated by the plague, as many were unable to control the infestation.
Fortunately, the trials this week are untroubled by the facial eczema problem striking parts of Hawke's Bay, and wider across the North Island, to levels not seen for several years, and isolated pockets where it's almost never appeared in the past.