Fieldays Exhibitor 2008 Issue 3 - Wintec

8 Fieldays Exhibitor
CHEERY CHAPS: The bachelors go through their paces with the Suzuki Cheerleaders
Boys get
pom pom
tips from
the pros
Avian death-merchant Neale
Blaymires is back at Fieldays
again with his Magpie Trip-
Trap.
The traps allow farmers to
eradicate the cunning black
and white bird and protect the
native bird population on their
properties.
The trap � rst appeared at
Fieldays in the inventions section
in 1999.
Most of Blaymires, annual
sales come from Fieldays and
the months following when orders
come in from around the
country.
“It’s good to have the contact
with the people…they come up
with good suggestions for the
traps,” Blaymires says.
It’s suggestions from punters
that have seen Blaymires add
By Janine Jackson
Behind every Fieldays bachelor
there’s a charming cheerleader.
In between performing for
various exhibitors, eight Suzuki
cheerleaders are on hand to put
the bachelor blokes through
their paces.
From judging their culinary
skills in a breakfast cook-off to
modelling farm fashion created
by the bachelors the cheerleaders
will appraise the lads’ knack
with the fairer sex.
Yesterday the cheerleaders
helped the bachelor boys
entertain a crowd at the Village
Green with an unrehearsed
dance.
Cheerleader Angela Clements,
who studies at Wintec
when she’s not cheering, was
impressed with their moves.
Fieldays Exhibitor has been recognised by the NZ National Fieldays Society for its Outstanding Contribution to the Success of Fieldays
PHOTO: Kelly Petersen
“They managed pretty well
under the circumstances,” she
said.
As well as performing at
Fieldays the girls cheer for the
Chiefs, Waikato Pistons basketball
team and the Air NZ
Waikato rugby team.
The winner of the Fieldays
Rural Bachelor of the Year competition
will be named tomorrow
at 1pm.
Aggressive magpies meet their match in trip-trap
By Janine Jackson
TRAPPED: Neale Blaymires with his redesigned magpie trap
mirrors to the trap and alter the
instructions along the way.
Although Blaymires has a
copyright on his trap this has not
prevented a dodgy customer in
the UK from counterfeiting and
selling the magpie trap on Ebay.
“I’ve tracked the guy through
my invoices two years ago when
he bought a trap from me,” he
says. Although too expensive to
take legal action he has successfully
had the traps pulled from
Ebay.
Blaymires decided to wage war
on magpies at his own property
in Te Puke but realised that the
birds quickly became gun-shy.
The traditional Larsen trap
proved to be unreliable as well
but Blaymires altered the original
design and hit upon the
Magpie Trip-Trap.
Magpies are notorious for being
highly aggressive when defending
their nesting territories
and driving away native birds,
such as kereru, bellbirds and
tui.
Where there’s a large population
of magpies there will be a
decrease in the numbers of native
birds, Blaymires says.
One of Blaymires’ � rst customers
was a woman in Ikamatua
on the West Coast who
was being attacked by magpies
when she was out horse-riding.
“It must have worked – she
hasn’t come back,” he says.
Magpie attacks on humans
are few and far between, he says,
although there have been stories
about cyclists in Christchurch
being plagued by assaults.