Pressure pushing down on TB…

To bring some semblance of chronological order to my TB experiences, I need to retrace my steps to the spring.

We entered the year having passed a TB test and awaiting our second test 60 days later. We passed that as well. I did not expect to pass either, so the anxiety was just the same.

Once we had passed this second test, we were able to have a bit of a clear-out of some of the calves we had accumulated.

The big one seemed to be the six-month test in the early autumn. Plenty of TB is still present around here and the consensus of the family was that we would surely fail. But we also passed that, to our great surprise.

Now we go on to 12-month testing, which is the norm around here. Once again, we don’t expect to pass. We had hoped this area would become a cull area, but that is not to be – apparently things have to get worse before anything is done about it.

You don’t fool me

I have been reading a report of work done with Queen guitarist Brian May to rid a farm of TB.

One of my problems in life is that I can usually see the other person’s point of view. This is not always a negative – if you can see where another person is coming from, you can often turn it to your advantage.

As far as I can see, this piece of work has two flaws.

Firstly, the regime involved keeping all the cattle in all-year round. Consumer surveys repeatedly tell us people don’t like cows to be kept in all-year around; they like to see them out at grass, which is where they should be.

It also begs the question: if no danger exists to their health, why do you need to keep them in? It seems an own goal of some epic proportions.

Secondly, it pointed the finger at manure and its use around the farm. I concede this could be a problem – we know the organism can live a long time in manure and on pasture.

However, Mr May said it was more of a problem now because in the past, farmers would compost their slurry and this process would kill the organisms before it was spread on pasture.

I wonder who told him that. There is no such thing as composted slurry – and never has been.

Slurry is wet and cold – you can’t even pile it up because it would run everywhere, and if you can’t pile it up, you can’t compost it. You can’t even put it in a digester unless you mix it with other things like maize or poultry manure – and even then, the maize or poultry manure has to comprise the greater part to work.

What I suspect he means – and this probably wasn’t explained to him very well (or he wouldn’t have got it so wrong) – was that in the 1960s and 70s, cows were moved from being milked in cowsheds to milking parlours. This meant you no longer needed to tie cows up by chain every night; you could loose house them.

Initially, most cows were housed loose on beds of straw. Although this looked okay, it didn’t work, either. Straw bedding heated up and bugs then proliferated. Bugs caused high, unacceptable, levels of mastitis.

Cubicles were, therefore, designed. They gave the cow a clean place to lie – and if they worked well, the cow’s poo went on to concrete and not her bed.

I’ve been around the dairy industry all my life, but never heard of composted slurry before and I think Mr May misunderstood what was being explained to him.

Whoever explained it didn’t do a very good job, either – if you are explaining something, you have a sort of duty to make sure your recipient understands. This is especially true if your recipient is so high profile and the subject is so contentious.

The move from cowsheds to loose housing took place 50 or so years ago and did not coincide with the bTB problem. If your evidence is based on events and coincidences, the protected status for badgers is a more likely candidate.

The trouble is, Mr May is very high profile and a sector of society will hang on his every word.

He clearly doesn’t understand what he is advocating, but I fully expect the media to be bombarded with earnest letters saying TB is the fault of farmers because they don’t compost their slurry anymore.

Playing the game

I have a sort of ongoing correspondence going on within the pages of my local newspaper. “They” write an anti-cull letter and I reply with a farmer’s view. Farmers say I reply well, and so it goes on.

It’s now my “turn”, but I don’t know if I should – I could be wasting my time.

Many anti-cull letters quote the TB regime in Wales as an undoubted success. I know lots of farmers in Wales and they tell me it is in disarray. I will concede these people have a skill in presenting opinion as fact. I will also concede the routine test doesn’t do us any favours.

I hear of too many dairy cows and suckler cows that are found to have TB lesions at slaughter; cows that have had several tests and passed. But I also know these people have never owned or worked with cattle; that they should take it on themselves to tell those who do how to conduct their affairs is both arrogant and patronising. If people want to be arrogant, it doesn’t bother me, but I could never put up with being patronised.

I also have a point of view, reached having experienced having to drive a bunch of young cattle into a lorry on their way to slaughter. They will never experience this.

They will also never know what it’s like to have your very living and way of life threatened by the TB issue.

I concede the solution lies with a raft of measures; no one answer exists.

They concede nothing – and don’t intend to.