Livestock
There are less breeding ewes run nowadays, but those ewe flocks are mainly high performance in terms of lambing percentage, lamb weights and wool weights. Much of the plains land is devoted to autumn, winter, early spring, lamb and hogget finishing, sourcing store stock from the whole of the South Island.
Ashburton District has generally excellent livestock health and thrift.
Beef breeding cows are mainly confined to the limited area of hill and high country, with plains land mostly devoted to growing and finishing, including supplying advanced store stock to Five Star Beef feedlot. There are also opportunities for growing and finishing of bull beef as a bi-product of the dairy industry.
Deer farming is less favoured at the present time (as a consequence of lower profitability compared with three years ago and earlier), however there are many breeding deer herds and finishing of deer for slaughter along with limited velvet production.
Other livestock include alpacas, goats and ostriches, together with many horse breeding and trading establishments in the District.
