Te Aute club to hold 2018 dog trials this November

Organisers say moving the dog trials date means the club would have access to well-fed sheep. Photo / File

A Hawke's Bay sheep dog trial club is holding its 2018 trials in 2017, two months ahead of the usual start of the season to avoid some of the vagaries of farming seasons in the region.

Te Aute club president Rocky Hawkins said the club's annual trials, usually held in April and which also ran last year in combination with the Hawke's Bay Sheepdog Trial Centre championships, would be held on November 2-4.

The club will however still hold trials in the new year, as host of the North Island championships in May.

Mr Hawkins said the club was experimenting with the new date, partly because the combination of the usual club trials and the North Island championships next autumn would take the land, the Brownrigg Agriculture Barker Block in Te Aute Rd, out of action for three weeks and that was "too much to ask."

"Due to normal dry Hawke's Bay summers we are unable to hold our club trial any earlier [in 2018] than late April," he said.

The trials would be held at "a busy time for all of us", he said. The timing would mean the club would have access to well-fed sheep, and avoid the fog which has tended to delay morning starts at some of the club's trials.

The club is expecting significant numbers across the four classes of the trials which are sandwiched by trials at the Royal Show of New Zealand in Hastings on October 19-20 and the Central Hawke's Bay A and P Show in Waipukurau on November 9-11.

The regular Hawke's Bay club trials season will start at Waikoau on the last weekend of January, and the centre championships will be hosted by the Takapau club about four weeks later.