MY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY NEW ZEALAND!
ELSIE HAGLEYElsie Hagley Urenui
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A NEW DAIRY SEASON IS HERE, 2009 - 2010!
September 2009 is looking better for Fonterra Farmers.
Day on the farm
Beef animals, this photo of my grandson, 14 months old, not understanding a electric fence,(which was turned off) inviting the cows to come and eat the grass.

Fonterra has a New Three-step Restructuring Proposal to it's Farmer Shareholders for Consultation!
It is fonterra's first attempt to change its capital structure since an ill-fated public listing proposal was abandoned in 2007.
New proposal gives farmers the opportunity to invest in their company's future.
First Step will allow farmers to hold 120% of their milk production, with the value-added componrnt of the payout paid on all shares held. The current rules mean farmers are only allowed to hold shares equivalent to their production levels.
Step Two will see the value of Fonterra shares re-adjusted to reflect the fact they are only available to farmers.
Fonterra will effectively hold the value of the shares at the existing $4.52 value until the restricted market price for the shares catches up.
The final Stage of the proposal involes farmers trading their shares among themselves, instead of trading them with the company. The restucture was needed to reduce the risks associated with the existing structure where share holdings are related to milk production.
Maybe instead of farmers investing in more land, miking more cows, this is the answer, for the farmers to invest in Fonterra.
It is the farmers company so why not invest, it will be a good start towards a better structure for Fonterra provided the rate of return on the extra shares is good.
Each step will be considered and voted on separately by shareholders and will only go ahead with 75% shareholders support.
If the first two steps are finalised and approved at the company' AGM in Ashburton on November 18 2009, the final phase could be voted on and in place as early as next year.
Both Federated Farmers and the Government welcomed Fonterra's announcement.
So 2010 could be good for dairy farming in New Zealand as a Fonterra shareholder.

Garden of great joy and pleasure, where the birds sing all day, at night the kiwi's call out!
That is something special, I have living in the ranges of Okoki, 20 kms from Urenui Taranaki NZ.
I am going to do a special Report taken from a newsletter June 2009 on East Taranaki Environment Trust.
KIWI'S
They have just finished the kiwi call survey, both for Purangi block and the Pouiatoa block.
The Purangi block has shown quite a change since trapping started in 2005 (That is stoat boxes set and checked regulary).
They have continued to use the same six listening sites to ensure consistency , each survey site is monitored for three nights for a two hour period, the first listening night at Purangi block was rather windy which resulted in poor results for that night.
At several of the sites a number of other kiwi calls were heard but the listeners could not get a fix on them, so they were not included, below are the best 2009 single night call and the 2007 best individual night calls in brackets.
Site 1  - 20 calls (9 calls)
Site 2 - 17 calls(13 calls)
Site 3 - 17 calls (5 calls)
Site 4 - 16 calls (4 calls)
Site 5 - 5 calls (4 calls)   
Site 6 - 9 calls (6 calls)  
This is the bit I like - at site 2   after the listening period, the listener played a kiwi call and a female replied, then she charged out of the scrub and bounced off his leg and wandered over to some crown fern and stopped, how exiting for the listener.
Wetlands are Important Worldwide
Hagley Wetlands Piko Road Urenui!
This wetland is part of my garden which is beautiful especially when the waterlilies are in flower. There where goldfish in it until the bad floods at Okoki on 2nd of May 2005. Now there is only eels, frogs and many types of insects busy buzzy around the plants and birds singing in the tree tops.

WETLANDS ALSO PROVIDE LANDSCAPE AND SCENERY VALUES!
Some wetlands are just temporarily wet, drying out between rainfalls others are permanently wet. The storage capacity of a wetland will detain floodwater with the peak flow and water levels downstream, evening out as it is slowly released from the wetlands area. Plus the slow release of water from a wetlands maintains stream flow and ground water levels during summer or periods of drought. Plants such as sphagnum moss can obsorb up to 26 times their own weight of water, peat can absorb up to 10 times it's weight, which during dry periods the water is then slowly released.
Wetlands are nature's sponge during storm events.
Our wetlands or pond never dries even when we have the driest of summers as the month of
February 2007 .25mm of rain.
This wetlands is the off-flow from the ranges around our farm a great place for breeding of ducks.
One day we recieved a very nice surprise to see ducklings following their mother out off the flaxes and swimming across the pond waddling throught the paddock and into the Urenui river.
Shags, Kingfishers and Pukeko's can be a a problem especially when you have young fish.
There is nothing more beautiful than the cool wetlands area with the ranges around you and the birds singing high in the tree tops, Magpie's calling out as though they are talking to you, until a hawk fly high in the air, then it all changes, as those noisey magpie's give chase to one of those precious Hawks that not many give credit to, as a prey bird they keep the forest clean of all those dead animals or predators that destroy the young birds and egg's with the threat of extinction of flightless birds like our Kiwi's. Wetlands have beautiful scenery and provide the landscape with essential growth to help keep
New Zealand clean and green.
It can be very hard to keep water quality high as heavy rains keep breaking away the banks !
Improving Water Quality in Taranaki.
New Culvert Piko Road Urenui!
Urenui River - putting a new culvert in on Piko Road Okoki!

ONE WAY OF KEEPING NEW ZEALAND CLEAN AND GREEN!
Taranaki has more than 300 mountain-fed rivers, but the land that feeds these rivers has become more and more dedicated to dairy farming, when it rains the run-off from these paddocks into the region's waterway's becomes more of an issue.
In an attempt to improve the water quality in 1994 the Taranaki Regional Council introduced its
Riparian Management Programme.
The term Riparian refers to anything existing on a riverbank and the Riparian Planting Scheme aims to create a barrier between the open paddocks populated by grazing livestock and the river itself. Generally this is a area of between four to six metres, which is fenced off and planted with a variety of plants. A grass buffer inside the margin filters run off from pastureland before it enters streams, thereby reducing the growth of river-choking algae.The Riparian Planting Scheme success relies very heavily on co-operation with farmers and other landowners and since the scheme's started, it has gone from strenght to strenght, to a point that there are now over 300 plans completed by the Taranaki Regional Councils  dedicated Officers every year.
Around 50% of Taranaki Dairy Farmers have so far adopted the scheme for their farms.
Under the Clean Streams Accord's Regional Action Plan for Taranaki, ninety percent of these plans must be implemented by 2015.
 KIWI - IS A  SYMBOLIC IMPORTANCE IN NEW ZEALAND
The Kiwi is New Zealands National Emblem!
Three Species of Kiwi  - Great Spotted Kiwi, Little Spotted Kiwi, Plus the Brown Kiwi.

HABITS BROWN KIWI
The Brown Kiwi survives in the South Island, Steward Island and Parts of the North Island of New Zealand.A flightless bird of the kiwi's size-roughly as big as a hen,is easy prey for flesh-eating mammals.At first glance,it barely resembles a bird. It has no visible wings or tail, but short, thick legs and coarse plumage that looks more like hair than feathers. The kiwi's eyesight is so good that the bird can run swifty through dense vegetable in pitch darkness.
It still survives in good numbers in some areas,especially in reserves.
The Kiwis home is mainly forest and scrub where it relies on it's strong legs to scurry through thick under-growth
The Brown Kiwi's
Length: 50cm,
Height: 35cm,
Weight: 2.2kgs
Females are about 20% heavier than the male.They generally lives in pairs.
Using calls to keep in contact within the dense forest.The Pair occupy and defend a territory vigorously Chasing away any intruding kiwis.                                                                         Brown Kiwi
In the thick Bush where I live in Okoki Urenui Taranaki,
Iam a very Lucky Person  to hear them calling out at dusk, one of the pleasure of living in My Beautiful Country,
Beside the Bush Clad Urenui River.The Brown kiwi spends the day fast asleep.
Concealed spot among undergrowth or logs.Unable to fly, it skulks about at night, probing and scraping for it's food on the leafy forest floor.

BREEDING
 Laying Season: July-February,the Female Kiwi produces one or two huge eggs, that may equal more than a sixth of it's body weight.
Each egg contains a large,nutritous yolk that lasts not only for the long incubation but also provides the hatching chick with a packet of food in the form of a yolk sac.
The female lays her eggs in a hole among dense vegetation, between tree roots or in a hollow log. The male kiwi her mate incubates them for 11 weeks - The longest known incubation period of any bird.
By the time it hatches out ,each chick is open-eyed and fully feathered.Within a week it is leaving the nest alone,attempting to get food for its self.
The effort of egg production for the female and incubation for the male cause the kiwi to lose about a fifth of their body weight during each breeding attempt.

FOOD AND FEEDING
At the tip of the kiwi's bill are a pair of unusually sensitive nostrils. The kiwi  uses these to find food, as well as to detect and locate fellow birds.It also has good hearing and a fine sense of touch,both of which helps it to secure food during it's night-time forages.
It's mixed diet includes insects, worms, berries and fruit,but it also catches the occasional small repite or amphibian. It exposes food by scratching through the leaf  litter with it's powerful claws, or by probing it's bill deep into the soil to smell and feel for invertebrate prey.

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Compiled by Elsie Hagley
Urenui, New Zealand.
Email:elsie_hagley@yahoo.com