Pastures Past: Mustering - from horseback risks to cattle herding by car

Horses and dogs are a more traditional way to muster cattle, but one Waingawa district farmer in 1940 used "a substantial-looking motor car". Photo / Sarah Ivey

Kem Ormond takes a look at the world of farming back in the day.

Farmers always seem to produce some of the most interesting time-saving measures ever.

However, mustering by car in a paddock that had been potholed by cattle - and unruly cattle at that - must have been a sight to behold.

I bet the local panel beater was rubbing his hands in glee!

Long before the motorbike and ATV were used, there were often terrible accidents while out mustering on horseback, not only for the rider but also for the horse.

Agonising climb

Man with fractured leg

Sends horse for help

Accident while mustering

Waipukurau Press, October 31, 1932

(Per Press Association)

Pahiatua, This Day.

E. L. Harvey, a prominent settler, dairy director and sportsman, met with a painful accident when his horse fell and rolled on him, fracturing his leg, whilst mustering.

Harvey had an agonising climb some distance up a hill.

He threw stones and got the horse to gallop, which attracted assistance.

Sheep mustering

New Zealand Herald, June 29, 1935

Dear Miss Morton,—

The sheep are mustered in November for shearing, February for dipping and lamb shearing and May for crunching.

The mustering party usually start at about 9 o’clock a.m., with every rider going a different way.

It is allright mustering on grassy hills but not so good in scrub 15ft high.

The sheep will dodge about in the manuka and you have to hold tight while the horse scrambles over logs and ditches.

Never mind if you do get scratched and torn—that is all in the game!

I think it is delightful to jump ditches, chase sheep and head them off and have about eight near escapes from having a header.

When the sheep finally reach the gate they insist on pretending not to see it and double back along the beach—that means a race to head them off.

When drafting them into the pens a benzine tin with a small stone is tied to the dog’s collar so he can’t run so fast.

Once he was jumping over the palings on the pens when he jumped short and landed half on one side and half on the other; he kicked and wriggled till he freed himself.

Sheep mustering is good fun when you start off fresh in the morning, but when you have chased sheep for five hours and gone two miles more than you would have had, had they gone quietly—well, it is a different matter, but I like mustering at all times.

—I am yours truly, Rona Coster, Whangaparaoa, Arkle’s Bay.

Labour for farms

Serious problem

Shearers and musterers

South Island difficulty

New Zealand Herald, December 22, 1938

[By Telegraph—Own Correspondent]

Christchurch, Wednesday

The shortage of shearers is becoming a serious difficulty with a number of runholders in the high country this season and, combined with the changeable and wet weather that has predominated all over the South Island for the last month to six weeks, it has become an almost insurmountable problem.

A representative of the Press who visited the North Otago and Central Otago districts was told that in the Lake Pukaki district there were three sheds within 20 miles’ of each other shearing with only one shearer each.

A number of sheds which usually employ from four to nine shearers this year have only two and three men on the board.

To add to the difficulty of the shortage of shearers another problem seems to be growing, and that is shortage of musterers.

This problem is not yet acute, but it seems that it is only a matter of time before it becomes so.

For shearing, mustering and rabbiting there are 110 labour-saving machines and men are essential.

All three are jobs that require several years of experience.

There seem to be fewer men now in the high country who do little else but mustering, and unless a man is mustering continuously for six or seven months of the year he finds it difficult to break in and train pups, with the result that dogs are becoming few and it is difficult for young men starting mustering to get enough dogs to make a start.

Mustering cattle by car

Cattle on farm

Gisborne Herald, February 3, 1940

There have been known many and various ways of mustering cattle, but a farmer was noticed recently in the Waingawa district, in a substantial-looking motor car, driving a mob of cattle across a paddock.

This novel method of mustering attracted considerable attention from passers-by who speculated as to the reason for the use of the motor car, one suggestion being that the farmer was hurrying up his mustering work before the petrol restrictions came in.

The attempt to control the cattle had they become unruly, would doubtless have provided as many thrills as a Hollywood “stunt picture.”

- Source: Papers Past