Federated Farmers will be asking councils in Hawke's Bay and Wairarapa to lower their farm dog registration fees this year during Long Term Plan consultation.
Farm dogs are low demand users of local authority dog control services, creating significantly lower relative costs for councils.
Councils vary with what they charge for rural dogs, although Federated Farmers guesses the level of work that rural dogs generate for councils is probably the same across districts, and pretty minimal compared to urban dogs.
Farm dogs are part of the family, and a valuable asset to the farm business. Farmers spend many hours training their canines as a source of pride, and bad behaviour like being aggressive to animals or people is dealt with quickly.
Farm dogs are contained in their kennels or chained up at night. Large farms mean dogs are contained on the property, they do not roam the streets and barking rarely annoys the neighbours.