Salesmen, stripe painting and seasonal farm activity

In the years when I first started farming, we used to get a lot of salesmen calling. More feed mills were around here then, so a good proportion were looking for more tonnage.

Most farm machinery firms had a salesman cold-calling – but probably half of them were selling animal health products, from sheep dip to minerals and anything in between. I noticed if someone called for the first time, he or she would be talking to you, but all the time looking over your shoulder and about your yard. At first, I thought he or she was just being nosey, which is fair enough, but then I thought they can’t all be nosey, so I started to ask what they were looking for.

The answer was always the same – horses. They all reckoned when they were training to be salesmen, they were told if they called on a farm for the first time and saw one horse, that was okay, and if they saw three horses, to be careful, but if they saw five or more horses, they were to do a three-point turn and drive out from there. The theory was if the farm had five or more horses, it was either very wealthy or had no money – invariably it was the latter.

Successful sale

I always gave these salesmen a fair hearing, if I had the time. One day, a new one turned up and gave me his full sales patter. Most of his products were for sheep, and as I didn’t have sheep at the time, most of what he had to say fell on stoney ground. Finally, he said he had a new product that would keep flies off cows. I’ve always been keen on products that would improve a cow’s life, so I was all ears and bought some.

I can remember it came in a big three gallon can; it was a thick liquid, a bit like wallpaper paste. You had to paint a stripe with a 4in brush down the spine from between the cow’s ears to the top of her tail. Then you had to paint a vertical stripe down each leg as far down as the knee or hock. I don’t know what was in it, but I never saw a fly on a cow again.

When my neighbour’s cows were under trees, distressed by flies, mine would be out grazing. Three months later, if the cows were wet, you could still see where I had painted the stripes. I probably got a lot on myself – I didn’t wear gloves when I applied it; gloves are for wimps – and we were milking in an abreast parlour so I was milking against hindlegs, every cow, every milking. I used it for three years and then it sort of disappeared.

The salesman said it wasn’t being made anymore, but I always suspected it was banned. Over the years we moved to more benign products that were supposed to do the same job. Chief among them were fly protection ear tags and pour-on products. We always favoured pour-ons over ear tags, working on the principle that if you were a cow, you probably thought you had enough stuff hanging on to your ears anyway.

We’ve had to rethink fly protection again now we are organic. The main protection for the cows in milk comes with the provision of garlic licks; but, like a lot of things, you rarely know how effective they are – only that doing something makes you feel better.

When the cows come into the parlour to be milked, we can protect them with fans that create a current of air that the flies don’t seem to like.

This is very important because, believe me, afternoon milkings on hot sunny days, when flies are biting cows’ legs, can be some of the worst milkings of the year.

We are able to lavish more care on our dry cows, which is probably more important because of summer mastitis. They also get garlic licks and their udders plastered with Stockholm tar, but probably their best protection comes from where they are.

We rent land about two miles away and, years ago, a previous tenant created several large, arable fields. In doing so, he fenced off bits that weren’t “handy”. We graze these bits with dry cows and four of these bits join together to create about 25 acres of grazing. The lower pieces are all surrounded by woods, but cows can progress to the highest piece, which is around 900ft above sea level.

You are always able to predict where the cows will be at any particular time of day. They will graze the bottom area at night and in the evening. If you go to see them in the evening, they are making their way down; go to see them in the early morning and they are slowly returning to the highest land. If you go to see them at any time in the day, they are always to be found lying comfortably on the highest fields. There is always a strong breeze up there. Obviously, flies don’t like it – the cows know that and choose to spend their days up there.

I often wonder where the idea came from to put fans in farm buildings to mitigate the nuisance flies bring with them. Whatever the answer, animals can work it out for themselves.

Seasonal activity

As the seasons progress, they are marked by farm activity particular to that time of year. But over the past four or so years, we have experienced a new activity that marks the arrival of corn harvest. The first fields to be cleared are winter barley fields, and with that will come strangers. They will be sitting in vehicles scanning the fields with binoculars. We call these people spotters – they are looking for hares. You rarely get close enough on a tractor to take note of their vehicle number; if you do get it at all, you were just lucky.

After them will come the hare coursers. You never know when they will come – they might come twice one week and not again for two weeks. All you will see is gates thrown off, fences damaged and piles of mutilated hares, put where you can find them, which is apparently hare coursers’ indecent gesture.

We get fed up with gates thrown off and stock escaping into neighbours’ crops, who have also had gates thrown off. But most of all, we feel for the fate of the hares. Why society allows this sort of thing to happen without public outcry is beyond me.