The View from the Hill

The long walk home, for our huge flock, after shearing on Sunday morning.  It is fair enough to ask, why are they not all shorn?  Well Mike our shearer suffered a back twinge, and felt it was too risky to carry on, and seeing as it was only 2 wethers and Ronnie the ram remaining, there was no real urgency.  We were very keen to get the 11 ewes clipped seeing as the weather was seriously warming up, and lambing just around the corner, the boys could wait.  It seems to happen every year, that the first ewe lambs the day after shearing, and sure enough, on Monday morning Conker popped out her 3 lambs.  Triplets are always tricky to rear, seeing as 3 onto 2 (teats) doesn’t go, the stronger two will always pinch most of the milk to the detriment of the third.  So after the colostrum had been shared, the prettiest one was taken away and she has been pampered with 4 feeds a day, and lots of attention from our young neighbours. 

We saw 3 more ewes lamb in the next two days, and right now the score is 8 ewe lambs and one boy.

For the more professionally minded reader, who might be tempted to cock a sneer at the miniscule flock size, I should point out that our sheep enterprise was long ago relegated to hobby status, after decades of trying to find a way to make a profit out of sheep farming, and failing over and over again.  The only reason for their presence on the farm now is purely as entertainment for our school visitors, and as teaching aids.  Being tame it is very easy to take a class of thirty children into the field where the sheep will get up close and greedy, in search of toast.  It is a fair enough transaction, some crunchy food in exchange for top quality entertainment, the children can feel the wool, discuss the chewing of cud, and how many lambs might they be carrying.  Some even get hugged.

Last week Will sowed the spring section of our cover crop seed supply for next season.  Alongside the lovely bright turnip plot he has sown buckwheat, spring vetch, daikon radish and camelina.  On the far side of the turnips is a lively plot of winter vetch, and beyond that, over the hedge, is a patch of winter sown phacelia, which today is almost fully in flower, proving very popular with the bees which have just arrived on the farm from the cherry fields of Kent.  This brings us up to around 40 hives in different locations across the farm.  Robert Hogben, from Dorchester, has been bringing his bees here for many years, and up to around 20 hives live here all year round.  He was keen that they are close to the beans.  This reminds me that after careful observation in the past, I doubt the value to the farmer of bees in the bean crop, I have watched as they stick their proboscis through the side of the flower tube directly into the drops of nectar, rather than fight their way into the flower from the top, therefore they do not collect any pollen with which to fertilise the next flower they visit, do not pass go, and do not collect £200.  There could be a risk that the drilled hole would actually cause the flower to abort, though I don’t have the heart to mention this to Robert.  I would however be very grateful to anyone who could shed some (scientifically rigorous) light on this little matter.

These handsome beasties have had to be isolated from the rest of our herd.  They are the unfortunate recipients of an ‘inconclusive’ test result at our TB test at the end of March.  This is a serious blow, as we now have to be closed until we test clear.  The category ‘inconclusive reactor’ (IR) seems to me to be utterly useless.  Either our animals have been exposed to the TB organism, or they have not.  As I understand it, having spoken to many vets about it, an animal reacts to the TB test vaccine if it has been exposed to TB, full stop.  However DEFRA, through its agency APHA, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, deems that the reaction lump has to be above a certain size in mm in order to be classified as a reactor, in other words, so that they will take it away and compensate the farmer for the loss of the animal.  Between ‘reactor’, and ‘clear’, there is this murky category of ‘inconclusive’, which has its own unique set of associated rules.  An inconclusive animal gets a second chance at the test, 60 days later.  If it is inconclusive again, it becomes a full reactor and will be taken by APHA. If clear it can return to the herd, but it will never lose the label that says it was once an inconclusive, and its presence in the herd prevents the farmer from reaching CHKS status for the herd, which can entitle him or her to extend the period between regular TB tests from 6 months to one year, which is hugely helpful.  The only way to get out of this situation is therefore to dispose of the animal as soon as possible, it can legally go for slaughter, but if it’s a beef animal may well not be fit (big enough), so the farmer loses out to a lower price than if he could have kept the animal until fully grown.  Things are a lot more complicated for dairy farmers, the IR may be carrying a calf, and you will be able to understand the challenging decision of whether to keep the cow until the calf is born, or to sell her on as quickly as possible to reduce the chance of infection spreading to other cows.  An inconclusive has to be isolated from the rest of the herd until it can be tested again.
Underpinning all this frustration is the very poor standard of the skin test used for regular TB testing, relying on the measuring of lumps.

The TB skin test is the common name for the Single Intradermal Comparative Cervical Tuberculin (SICCT) test. This skin test is regarded as the definitive indicator of infection by the bacterium that causes TB in cattle – Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis). It is the required test in the EU and has proved to be a reliable tool worldwide.

Two types of tuberculin, one made from killed Mycobacterium bovis and the other from killed Mycobacterium avium, ( a bird related bacteria) are injected into the skin on the side of the neck, approx. 3 inches apart.  The animal is then examined 3 days later, if the bovine lump is larger than the bird lump, then it has reacted.  The reason for the bird related vaccine is so as to account for background levels of infection in the local environment.  It is the difference in size of lumps which is all important.

It is instructive to recall the days of the TB cull, which controversially involved the catching and dispatching of badgers, a known vector of bovine TB.  In Dorset the 5-7 year cull periods in different parts of the county resulted in reductions in numbers of new TB outbreaks of more than 50%. This has taught us 2 main things, 1) Reducing badger numbers can reduce TB in cattle, and 2) Reducing badger numbers will never eradicate TB, it could only ever be one of a number of tools in the box, and only of any justifiable use if we are a great deal more rigorous in removing TB from cattle herds than we are currently.  After many years of TB levels rapidly expanding, it is now everywhere, deeply embedded and all too often, with current testing methods, lying undetected and infectious in many herds.  Utterly depressing, with insufficient vigour being put into properly dealing with the problem.

A number of things are needed:

Better testing

Better on farm hygiene (keeping cows and badgers apart, more rigorous health screening of cattle).

A TB vaccine, which can be distinguished from actual TB in animals

An acknowledgement that TB is in the wild deer population and doing something about it

Allow for badger culling in areas where TB seems endemic.

I know of one large dairy farm where any animals that show the slightest reaction to the skin test are taken out, in other words a zero tolerance policy.  There is a lot to commend this approach, although it seems costly to the farmer, in the long term it is probably the cheapest and most effective.

We may soon be starting to moan about the lack of rainfall. After very many months moaning about too much rain. The 21 months to the end of March this year showed a consistent running annual total above 1200mm, which is significantly higher than our long term average rainfall of 1050mm. Breaking down the 36 years of records into 12 year chunks, shows a pattern of increasing rainfall.

• Annual averages:
• 12 yrs 1988-2000  992mm, 40in
• 12 yrs 2000-12     1045mm, 42in
• 12 yrs 2012-24     1122mm, 45in

Anyway, rather than moan, it would seem miserable not to celebrate the fabulous blossom we have seen everywhere over the last few weeks, from the moment the blackthorn burst into flower and the first cowslips which soon followed, then bluebells, wild garlic and other woodland flowers. Fruit trees and hawthorn have continued the theme, suggesting potential for the fruiting season, it has been reminiscent of 2020 when the awfulness of the pandemic was in some way balanced by a sunny and warm early spring.

As captured below by Alan Wicks, always a real treat to see what he finds around the farm.

Last episode Jan-Feb

10 Years ago April 2015

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