by websitebuilder-hub
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08 Apr, 2020
Welcome to the many who have joined me this month: working from home. I have never known anything different. I hope we all manage to get through these challenging times. Life on the farm must go on, albeit some distance apart. I should be on holiday, but alas, better in Tilbrook than on a cruise ship in the Med this year! Last Saturday I completed the Spring Barley drilling. The conditions were fair and hopefully with a good spring & kind summer weather, we should be OK. The February drilled Winter Wheat which was a mere 4 months late has come through with a good % emergence. Only time will tell how it turns out at harvest. You may have seen that the cattle are out at grass. They have had a long winter in the buildings as some were in a month earlier than normal. It has been OK for them, not too cold and plenty of straw in the bed and hay in the manger. They have turned out in fair condition & will soon put on weight with plentiful grass in front of them. All the ones in the grazing fields near the village will stay there until they are brought back ready for calving. Disappointing though, we are not able to go to the breed society spring sale in Sedgemoor Market this week. A young Bull (photo attached) Tilbrook President 2 ½ years old had been entered for the show & auction. He has had his DNA certified by Weatherby’s and he will only give polled calves. (No horns) He has passed a whole range of blood tests and pre movement Bovine TB test. He has been halter trained and looked after individually all winter in preparation for the show & sale. Currently stock auctions for slaughter animals can still go ahead. However, Pedigree sales are off, as are all summer shows. Luckily there was much interest in him, and he has been viewed before lockdown. Hopefully he will be going down the M11 shortly without all the razzmatazz of going to the Devon showring. His job is “key” and he will be able to go, unless the rules change again! I am going to look back beyond the month, to the foot & mouth epidemic of 2001. There are a lot of similarities to the current pandemic. The first case was in February and initially it spread slowly. The government were slow off the mark to tackle the disease and the number of cases soon escalated. Like now, new rules were quickly brought in, understood and obeyed. All livestock farms were in lockdown. The road through the farmyard to Covington was shut for months with a disinfectant straw mat outside the cattle yards. No lorries came onto the farm. No livestock could leave, not even to a slaughterhouse until inspected by a vet. Many retired vets were recalled back to work for MAFF. MAFF had a name change to DEFRA after the disaster. Initially all infected animals were slaughtered and burnt on farms. All rural footpaths were shut to help prevent the spread. Like now there were hotspots in certain parts of the country, where the population is higher. This time London, last time Devon & Cornwell & the lake District where there are more cattle & sheep than humans. The general election was delayed, this time the local elections. The use of testing, like now again, was questioned. The situation got worse and eventually the army were called in to help. The acronym SOS in 2001 didn’t mean “Save our Souls” but “Slaughter on Suspicion” and every animal within 5Km of a suspected case was also slaughtered. There was too much flesh to burn on farms so there were sites were hundreds of lorries tipped carcases to be buried in mass graves. The number of cases soon dropped, but hotspots continued for a while. Eventually no more cases and the clean up continued with all premises being disinfected. 6 million farm animals were slaughtered. 10% of the UK livestock. It was a devastating time for the 2000 infected farms. There was one benefit. Unlike now nobody walked the countryside from February to October. The nesting birds had a wonderful undisturbed nesting season! The current situation can’t be so brutal & hopefully we will soon be over the worst. Stay safe & keep your distance. Continue hand washing and we will pull through.