An unforgettable bad year

It is customary to judge a business on its financial performance from April to March. From a farmer’s perspective, it is usually the calendar year that lives in your memory.

A good year, or bad one, impacts on financial performance, but it is the negatives that live in the memory. It is one of the ironies of farming that the negatives are largely, and often, beyond your control.

Last year will live in my memory as a bad year for several reasons. Firstly, we had to cope with more winter conditions than we had in recent years. That used to be the norm in our lives, but a succession of mild winters had tended to make us forget what winter was really like. It was the knock-on effect that impacted the most.

Long winter, then drought

We started the year with so much hope – after all, we were to become fully organic in July; something we had been working towards for nearly two years. We had been told the hardest part of conversion would be the final six months, when you had to buy expensive organic feed, but had yet to qualify for higher organic milk prices.

To mitigate the amount of expensive feed needed, we culled some cows that weren’t really performing and allowed numbers to drift down. It was our intention to build numbers back up again once organic conversion was complete. However, the weather continued to make it a late spring, so the cows went out to grass a month later than usual. Despite our good intentions to cut costs and purchase feed accordingly, we had a winter that lasted a month longer than usual. So, although we had cut back on feed, we ended up buying as much.

The grass then grew as fast as I had ever known it to, but not for long, and before you could say “lawnmower”, we were into a drought. Some of the drought may have occurred at the new higher milk prices, but they were, nevertheless, “winter feeding” months, albeit in the middle of summer and, as with most dairy farmers, we had to feed grass that should have been earmarked for next winter. It was difficult to get cows to perform in those conditions, which meant a huge cost to it all.

One of our final acts before we went organic was to go through the cows again and cull any that weren’t performing – passengers, we call them. We identified five and duly sent them off. That was a big mistake as TB lesions were found in one. Our whole herd test was brought forward to early October and six more reactors were found. Not only did we have the expense of keeping calves we would normally sell, we culled five and lost six cows. We couldn’t buy the 20 or so freshly calved cows or heifers we intended, so we were 30 cows short of the numbers needed to make it all work. On top of that, we have to feed all those extra calves on organic feed, but organic calves are yet to show a real premium.

Today, we have passed our whole herd TB test – this is excellent news and wholly unexpected. How do you go from six reactors to none? It’s almost bizarre. It just goes to show the TB issue is becoming as predictable as winning a lottery.

I’ve read a fifth of all the badgers picked up as road kill in Cheshire had TB¹. It could, therefore, be a fifth of all badgers are affected. It might be fewer, but could just as easily be more. Whatever the number, it is one that can’t be ignored if we are to beat this problem.

In my writing I try hard not to portray an image of the whingeing farmer; many farmers victimise themselves and constant whingeing is a part of their lives. This article, so far, could be seen as a whinge, but I am merely seeking to show you what effect a TB breakdown can have on your business. The effect can vary from “profound” to “devastating”, according to how serious the breakdown is and for how long.

The most disappointing aspect is you have very little control over it all. The constant plea to improve biosecurity is merely window dressing; most of this is just common sense and the idea you can badger-proof your fields is close to farcical.

As I write this, it is three months since our reactors went and we still haven’t been paid for them. I know of two or three places where you can send cull cows and get paid for them within three or four days.

BSE threat

I thought TB breakdown was bad enough, but worse was to come. A few weeks ago we had a cow that went blind, so we sent her off. I thought she probably had listeria, but what do I know? A couple of days later, the ministry told us it thought the cow had BSE. Things moved very quickly after that.

The next day, the ministry told us 42 cohorts of the cow had been identified, so officials called by and took those 42 passports away, and told us if the cow did indeed have BSE, the 42 cohorts would be removed as well and we would get £800 for them.

I have to say the whole experience – the removal of the passports – felt heavy handed. I queried this with the NFU, but I’m told this was routine practice. We went 10 days before we were told the cow was okay – they were very long days. I’ve already mentioned we are short of cows and why – the prospect of losing another 42 could easily put us out of business; £800 doesn’t buy you very much of a cow. When the cow went clear, the passports were returned the next day.

A lot of beef suckler herds exist in this area and, over the years, we have sold beef cross calves to farmers who have lost a calf. They often take a heifer calf – usually a Limousin cross black and white “that will make a nice cow one day”.

One of my neighbours has several cows that started life here and one of these was identified as a cohort of our “BSE cow”, and her passport duly collected. It could easily have been more, but he was the only one who told me. The use of the word “cohort” in this context has always intrigued me. Faint memories of school days tell me a cohort was a part of a Roman legion – it is a word rarely used elsewhere. I suspect the average person doesn’t even know what it means.

The use of cohort was probably the brainchild of a ministry vet somewhere, albeit one with a classical education. Far better to use a word such as contemporary, which is much more self-explanatory.