新西兰英语 781 Volunteers help farmers

 　　Many farms in the high country in Otago and Canterbury had so much snow that their animals could not move and the farmer could not move to the animals to bring them hay. For the last two days, 50 or 60 volunteers helped to rescue sheep. Most of the volunteers were other farmers. They used tractors or bulldozers to make tracks or they walked through waist-high snow to find animals. It rained for 2 days before the snow so many sheep were wet and they became weak without food for several days. When volunteers find weak animals, they put them in a truck to take them to a dry shed.

　　About 40 sheep stations are more than 500m above sea level and have a lot of snow. Some of these high country farms are very big. For example, Waipori Station, about 3 hours by road from Dunedin in good weather, is a large farm with 30,000 sheep, 20,000 cattle and 1,000 calves¹. Helicopters dropped hay to animals on some of these big farms today.

　　The temperature was -13 degrees this morning in inland Otago so another problem is frozen² water. Animals need water and if it is frozen, the farmer has to find some way to get fresh water to the animals.

　　Farmers say this is the biggest snow fall they have had on their farms in 40 years.

　　Vocabulary

　　?volunteers – people who help other people without pay

　　?waist-high – as high as someone’s waist

　　?sheep station – very large sheep farm; some have other animals too

　　?cattle – cows and bulls

　　Note: sheep– singular and plural (1 sheep, many sheep); cattle – plural (1 cow, 1 bull, many cattle)

1 calves   

n.(calf的复数)笨拙的男子，腓；腿肚子( calf的名词复数 )；牛犊；腓；小腿肚v.生小牛( calve的第三人称单数 )；（冰川）崩解；生（小牛等），产（犊）；使（冰川）崩解

参考例句：

• a cow suckling her calves 给小牛吃奶的母牛
• The calves are grazed intensively during their first season. 小牛在生长的第一季里集中喂养。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 frozen   

adj.冻结的，冰冻的

参考例句：

• He was frozen to death on a snowing night.在一个风雪的晚上，他被冻死了。
• The weather is cold and the ground is frozen.天寒地冻。