Foot-and-mouth Crisis

I know this must seem a very clichéed picture to most of you. But when it's your farm it's anything but a cliché.

Many of you will be wondering what is happening on the farm. Many thanks to everyone who has let us know that they are thinking of us. It is a real boost to get all your kind messages.

My brother Chris has made me some posters. Download them, copy them, design your own. Adapt them as car stickers. He's adapted my gate photo for me!

A farmer's diary from Cumbria, http://www.whiteholmefarm.com/footandmouth.htm

Lucy Wilson, age 14, is the daughter of friends who farm a few miles away. here is her poem.

Cathy is a sheep farmer with a prize winning flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep in South Devon. She has been sending me wonderfuly heartening emails, full of hope and faith and stories of her animals. Click here to read them.

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14th April

We're still here. There are times when I wish they would come and we could have our fight, win or lose, and get it over with. Over the weeks, the enemy has changed. At first it was just the virus. Very frightening because it was invisible. I was frightened of the wind. Now that enemy has been joined by a great, blind, juggernaut. If we are standing in its way, will our arguments stop it?

I've been finding it very difficult to write this today. I've got too much buzzing around in my mind. Look at http://www.bullman.org/htmlpages/insight.asp for some interesting ideas.

Barn Park in early June

The figures for the cull were on Channel 4 news on Friday. They broke the figures down into infected and contiguously culled. I didn't write the figures down as I thought they would be on their web site, but it hasn't been updated. I looked on the MAFFia site. They are putting some figures up again. The total slaughtered is over a million, of these, there are over 400,000 bodies to be disposed of. There are more than half a million more waiting to die. They will need to be disposed of too. There are nearly two million animals entered on the welfare scheme. And I was forgetting to include the 300,000 sheep killed in the "voluntary" cull (let us take your sheep an dyour cows might be saved) The scientists are predicting that 16%, that's one in six, of our livestock farms will be wiped out before the end. That means more than nine million bodies, plus those on the welfare scheme. It feels very wrong to be reading or writing about these figures. It's obscene. When I was reading the MAFF site just now I was feeling physically sick. I know these are "just animals" but if we can let this slaughter of animals take place what else are we capable of allowing?

The lambs this year are the best we've had. They are growing well and they are racing up and down the pens, springing and twisting in the air. I wish you could sit up on the hay and watch them. They need to be out in the fields. The grass is growing. We'll have to put them out soon, or we'll have health problems with them. It's impossible to plan our grazing. The fields down by the woods sometimes have deer in them. FMD may be in the deer population. When will they let us vaccinate? Why are they saying that possible vaccination is only for cows?

I've been doing anything except write this, for the past 2 hours. I suppose I'm thinking of too many things at once. We had a phone call on Thursday. Our Form D was lifted. In due course we will get a Form E. In theory we are now able to have visitors in the Barn. If we had wanted to let it over Easter, they had left it rather late. I spoke to a friend yesterday who is under a form D. The rules have changed. MAFF have told her that she can keep her B & B open and also her self-catering accommodation. I'm not sure of the MAFF reasoning, that the farmer and his family have to wash and change their clothes when they leave the farm, but a visitor staying in their house does not have to. My friend says she is not prepared to risk it. Neither am I. But most of the farms I know with holiday businesses are open. They have to be, in many cases it is the only money coming in.

I am afraid that FMD will be spread by visitors over this holiday weekend anyway. "One farmer found a walker actually in his farmyard, where when asked if he was aware of F&M he replied 'YES' but as there were only two cases in Oxon, and only two here in Cornwall and nowhere near the farm what was there to be concerned about!! The farmer ''asked him to depart'' to which he replied along the lines of 'country yokels'." There are more such stories. Most people are being thoughtful and careful, but it only needs a handful of idiots.

I had an email from Cumbria on Thursday:

I have just had another look at the MAFF site they are providing more details for Cumbria and Devon. In Cumbria on the 11th April they had already killed 313,620 infected animals (by infected I mean animals from infected farms), and 351,793 uinfected. This figure does not include animals waiting to die. In Devon on the same date they had killed 207,622 animals altogether. Of these 69,431 are from infected farms and 138, 551 are uninfected. There are a further 5,428 animals from infected farms waiting to die and they don't give the figure for the uninfected. Of the 207,622 bodies, 81,744 had been disposed of. These figures represent more than 600 devastated farms, and no, Mr Blair and Mr Brown, not pounds of sausages, or sunday roasts, but irreplaceable breeding stock and broken lives.

 

13th April

Back on the 10th April, I wrote that we did not lamb our shearlings. James went to feed the hoggs last evening and found one hogg had a dear little lamb. She doesn't look old enough to be a mother, but it is a good little lamb. We were a little late taking 3 ram lambs out of the flock of lambs in the autumn. They were taken out exactly 147 days ago (gestation period for a lamb). Hopefully, they were taken out before they could do more harm. The hoggs haven't been dagged so there was nothing obvious to indicate she was in lamb. We do feel rather stupid!

I've spent a lot of the day on the phone. There are too many stories of incompetence. On one farm, a Ministry vet diagnosed FMD in a bullock. The vet was wanting to authorise slaughter of the animals on that farm and on the six neighbouring farms. The farmer insisted on a second opinion. He had to fight for it. It was a misdiagnosis. Another farmer has twice had vets driving into his yard without disinfecting their cars. On a culled farm, lorries have been loaded with bodies, and then, nowhere for the bodies to be taken, they've tipped them out again. They are lighting a big fire outside Holsworthy, a town of several thousand people, by the main road to Bideford, not far from the hospital. It will burn for at least ten days. They've put plans in place in case the town needs to be evacuated because of the pollution. There are more than 110,000 bodies lying rotting and picked at by birds, foxes and rats, on farms in Devon. Farmers cannot leave their farms till the bodies have been disposed of. And the word from the scientists is "kill faster, kill more". It's Good Friday today, the first Good Friday when I haven't gone to church.

I keep hearing people say, "farming is only 1% of the economy". Down here it is more like 17%. In Devon, if Exeter and Plymouth are discounted it must be even more. Look at the Downing Street Newsroom web site. None of the stories were about foot-and-mouth. I was surprised to find that the only reference to foot-and-mouth was in relation to tourism and opening waterways. £8,000,000 to eight coal mines. No mention of the contiguous cull policy. How can they just ignore it, when Tony Blair says it is his top priority.

I don't think I want to talk about killing just now. The video of that man shooting sheep and lambs running round a field left me shaking. I've just heard on the radio that MAFF were saying it had to be done "because the sheep had escaped from the farm". Any farmer knows that it was not necessary to do it like that under any circumstances. I have heard other stories about animals being chased round fields. Unfortunately they only take notice if it is videoed.

I have been feeling very dispirited today. Talking to other farmers, they are feeling the same. It is going on so long and there is no end in sight. The worst of it is, that when a friend is needing comfort you can't go round and give a hug and sit and talk. How many farms will be left when this is over?

I'm going to bed.

The green dot means a fostered lamb.

From Cathy:
We can celebrate over this weekend with the knowledge of the awesome and wonderful work that Jesus Christ did for us, the sacrifice he paid in taking away the shame of our sins - rejoicing to know that He is not dead - our Redeemer lives - He is not dead but is very much alive - He is Risen - Hallelujah - one phase of a song comes into my mind as I write this - "I know that My Redeemer lives" Praise God.

 

12th April

I have just spent an hour on the telephone, trying to find out how many farms have had their stock slaughtered in the contiguous cull. The press office told me it was not information they were giving to the press. The duty vet passd me onto another department who said they were not authorised to give the information and they passed me back to the press office. I'm finding it deeply sinister. A helpful clerk did suggest that I ring the NFU and ask Anthony Gibson. I will.

Ben Gill yesterday, was saying the cull was working. It isn't. Vaccination is still an "option" but I don't think it's an option they will use now unless they absolutely have no alternative. To do so would be to admit they were wrong.

I've had a reply. MAFF is covering up the figures deliberately. Why? Because they make this brave policy look like what it is. Mindless slaughter. Numbers for the cull obviously vary, but an informed rule of thumb is 5.5 farms on average for every single infected farm. So when you hear that there have "only" been 13 cases, there have been 65 farms desrtroyed. The new case at Axminster will take out 18 farms, many of them dairy farms. VACCINATE NOW. I will put up a letter later this evening that you can send to the PM and anyone else you can think of.

It is a shame that the Western Morning News is not on the internet. They seem to be the only paper with consistently good coverage of this crisis. Anthony Gibson yesterday "How many more (cases) are there out there, lurking under the guise of 'slaughtered on suspicion'? We don't know because they won't tell us. Why? Are they trying to give the impression of winning, when the reverse is the case?.........Agree to do interview for lunchtime. HQ probably won't like it, but I'm fed up with the spin and the smear......Bureaucratic chaos reigns.........."

I spent a long time in a pen with a gimmer, this morning. She had a lovely big ram lamb and I lay on the straw close to her and watched as she licked it and whickered to it, and it struggled to get on its feet. Easter is a very special time. I had an email from a dear friend in Germany this morning: "Happy Easter. I guess it will be different this year, but it still is. Remember the reason Jesus died for. We will never be lost and all is going on some time." Looking at the little gimmer and her lamb it is easy to believe it.

when you see a lamb being born, it is difficult to believe that it can live.

just born

 

just a minute or two later

another few minutes

I stopped taking pictures and made sure it had a drink.

 

 

11th April

It's an absolutely glorious day. I've skived off for the 3rd time today, but this time I've taken a notebook with me. I've got the dogs with me and I'm sitting with my back to a fence post looking out over the valley to Kit Hlil. Dartmoor to my left, Bodmin over to my right. There are birds in the hedges and a lark soaring up high. There is the gentle buzzing of insects. The dogs are running around and then lying down. Jess comes up for a pat and licks something tasty off my plastic over-trousers. My black wellingtons are soaking up the heat. The gorse is blooming, there's a big patch of it further down the valley in the distance. There's some blue speedwell just beside me, and on the hedge-bank there are violets, soapwort and celandines. I know that further down, in the field below the wood, just above the river, there is a blue haze of violets in the shade of the trees. I won't see it this year. There is the sharp, fresh smell of crushed nettles. In the distance is a sound I haven't heard for weeks. Someone is ploughing. I heard a buzzard mewing just now and realised what was missing. Normally we would see several buzzards hovering over the farm. Where are they all? They are carrion eaters, so I suppose they are finding better pickings further East. That is probably where the crows are too. It is difficult to imagine that there is such devastation so close. I am looking across at our neighbour over the river. There are sheep and cattle in his fields. We will have to put ours out soon. The big dairy herd further up must still be housed as the fields are empty.

I came up here earlier today. I sat for 20 minutes and just soaked up all the peace. I wonder how long more we will have the same view? It won't be the same when all the fields are ploughed and there is no grass, as the stock has all gone. Apparently the government has plans to rationalise farming. Fewer, bigger farms. 25% of farms to go. What a loss that would be. Where I am sitting now I can see 12 different farms in the immediate distance. There are many more beyond the first ridge. All those little farms support the local economy.

We had our much advertised letter from the minister today. He says that farmers don't want vaccination. Can't we have a referendum before they kill all our animals?

We're having problems with poor Baa Baa. We're keeping her in a pen with her mother inside a bigger pen of ewes and lambs so they can get used to her. Every time I let her out, the other sheep go for her. Vera is particularly bad. Vera is a big ewe with a torn ear. Her full name is Primavera, as she was our very first lamb, premature and needing a lot of care. She has grown up into a thug. She stands and glares at Baa Baa and then runs right across the pen and head butts her viciously. I daren't leave Baa Ba in the pen on her own. It will be better when they are out in the field. We are longing to put them out, the grass is growing beautifuly. We can't keep them in much longer. But we are dreading it too.

The sheep will be taken regardless.

A farm in Devon is resisting the cull. It is 3 weeks since the infection, and they touch the infected farm by one field, ¾ of a mile from where they house 171 Pedigree Jersey cows. Mad. They could have been just 2 fields away and they would be alright so long as someone else owned those 2 fields. What is this scientific advice that MAFF are following?

Sitting here, with the sun just gone behind a cloud, and getting cold, there's a bit of gorse poking through the fence and prickling my left arm, the dogs are lying quietly and the birds are singing and it is all so normal and sane and natural. Can any of this killing be true?

 

 

 

10th April

Carcass situation continues to worsen: At the time of writing there are well over 60,000 carcasses strewn across the Devon countryside, some having been dead already for well over a week, with no sign of removal. All the time they continue to decompose, presenting an ever increasing health risk and causing huge mental anguish to the affected farmers. from today's NFU Bulletin.

Sorry not to write anything sooner. I did at one point sit down in the shed to write something, but was interrupted by a sheep!

The bulletin reveals that 1,000 holdings in the South West have been subjected to compulsory slaughter. I've just been looking on the MAFF web site, wondering about the rest of the country, but there is no mention of the numbers involved in the contiguous cull. I've rung the help line, and was told that that was a political question and I should ask my MP. Could any of you ask yours?

It's been a lovely afternoon, windy and cloudy, but the clouds have been those soft white puffy ones that are scudding so fast across the sky they only obscure the sun for a minute or two. The birds have been almost shouting, they are singing so loudly, and the blossom in the hedges is begining to be joined by that wonderful fresh green of the new leaves.

Gertie's piglets are running around and chasing each other, and even climbing out of the pen (the bottom rail is missing). They make funny little deep barking, grunting noises, almost staccato. I hadn't realised how very active they would be from the start. Gussie's aren't quite so adventurous yet. Both lots climb all over each other in a great heap. I've been watching the lambs and enjoying them a lot today. Each pen with 12 or so ewes and lambs, has some straw bales so the ewes can tuck themselves up with their lambs. They all have their favourite places to lie. The lambs are growing beautifully. They are racing around in gangs, leaping up and off the bales and doing the most spectacular twisting leaps. I do miss being able to share them with friends and visitors.

Sheep in Barn Park 8th April 2000

I've been thinking about the government's attitude to sheep. In yesterday's bulletin we were told that if by some lucky chance you managed to escape the contiguous cull for 21 days, then "cattle and pigs that are clinically examined and found to be free of disease need not be slaughtered but the sheep will be taken regardless". Why? If my sheep are infected then so are my cows, and vice versa. Then I had an email from a farmer friend in which he said "Most farmers would rather lose their sheep than cattle, and I know we all get attached to particular sheep but their life expectancy is shorter than cows and also from a practical point of view, as sheep can breed before they are a year old, it would take less time to regenerate the sheep flock".

Yes, I do get attached to particular sheep, but it is more than that. I know we haven't been farming long, but already I am attached to the flock. The flock is more than the individual sheep. I'm not sure if I can explain. For a start, we don't lamb our hoggs. We wait till they are two years old, as we like them to finish growing before they are in lamb. That way they live longer. We keep a closed flock, only buying in rams, and that way we have found that their susceptibility to disease has lessened dramatically. We were lucky when we started that we bought from someone who was selling most of his flock, and we bought a few older ewes from one other person. If we had to start again we would never find such a good starting flock. We would have to start with ewe lambs as we would be unlikely to find gimmers that hadn't been lambed. We certainly wouldn't be able to buy a whole flock of organic ewes. A flock takes years to build up. Whatever you buy you risk buying in disease.

Of course, many farmers do not run closed flocks. Sheep are bought and sold. Many lambs are sold as 'stores'. A farmer with grass will buy them to finish them. Some are finished with grain. It's not a wrong way of farming, it's just different, but the loss of the sheep is more easily made up. It's a bit like comparing a nursery man who grows bedding plants for the mass market, with a specialist grower of rare shrubs. They both work hard and suffer a loss if someone destroys their stock, but one is so much more replaceable than the other. I am not trying to say that we are in the latter category. We are still too inexperienced , and have not been farming for long. But farmers with flocks that they might have inherited from fathers and grandfathers, or bred carefully themselves over years, will be suffering a loss that might never be replaced.

I looked at Nick Brown's speech on the MAF web site.

He said several things that I take issue with. One was: "The number of animals authorised for slaughter was 1,366,000, ..........This is out of a total UK cattle, sheep and pig population of over 55 million, and against a figure of some half a million animals which would go for slaughter in a normal trading week." Is there anyone in the London office of MAFF who knows enough about farming to know that we do not normally put all our breeding stock and dairy cows through the food chain? It was bad enough when Tony Blair said it, but surely this man is meant to be Minister for Agriculture.

He also said: ""Some of the isolated cases that have appeared in recent days and weeks appear to be directly attributed to farm to farm transmission from infected areas to clean areas. That point was made very forcefully to myself and the Prime Minister at our meeting with the NFU this morning and we share their concerns. "

It is dificult to reconcile that with the statement in today's NFU bulletin:

I went to bed earlier than usual, as I was doing the 5.00 am check . The alarm didn't go off and I woke at 6.30. A gimmer had had a lovely big lamb some time earlier and it was fine. I'd have felt rotten if it hadn't been.

I've been feeling hopeful today. Whatever happens I know that we will be alright. I don't want to start again, but we will if we have to. We'll carry on fighting, but if we lose we won't have lost. Does that make sense? I have been wonderfully encouraged by the emails I've been getting. I need to spend a day putting some of them up on the web. One today said:

"....the curlews - with their long haunting cries - have returned to the fields and moors. There are other signs of life and spring too, the startled explosion of Partridge taking flight from a field as we walk by on the road. On the moors the Lapwings are returning - dive bombing my car as I pass by their chosen nest sites. On sunny days I've heard Skylarks, and once too, I thought I saw some House Martins flying by the house....two or three weeks earlier than last year. So the great cycle of the seasons and nature carries on."

Thank you, Nick and Ann. That is it, really. Life does go on and so will we.

Jess and Judith in Higher Racks

9th April

MAFF confirm contiguous policy - the slaughter of cattle goes on: MAFF have confirmed that the current policy of slaughtering all susceptible livestock on contiguous holdings will continue. From yesterday's NFU bulletin

I am more frightened now. If our neighbour's animals become infected all our animals will be killed even though they have had no contact. It's going over and over in my mind. We have had no deliveries (not even oil, and it is getting very low), no one has come onto the farm for at least three weeks, our animals are all in sheds. We don't allow the dogs near the animals just in case they pick up the virus on their coats when they have a run in a field. The cats will never forgive me, they hate, hate being shut up. The chickens which like to wander far too far over the fields are running up and down in their pens, trying to get out. My poor mother-in-law, who will be 90 in June, looks forward every year to spending hours in the shed looking at the lambs. She has begged us to let her and we have so cruelly barred her from the farm. All this should save us from the virus, but it cannot save us from MAFF. We have had the healthiest lot of lambs we have ever had, and infected sheep do not produce healthy lambs. "Ultimately, if necessary, MAFF do have power of entry to implement their decision." They could force their way in, and I would be arrested for resisting (as I would).
Does anyone out there have any ideas how to stop it? It's not just me and my farm, my animals that you've read about and seen pictures of, it's hundreds of farms with well loved animals. How can this be happening? Is this really England? I'm not surprised I got this email from a farming friend who is leaving to farm in New Zealand:

"I can't tell you how glad we are to be able to leave the UK. The joy we feel
at our exciting and hopeful future is matched by our sadness at leaving so
many friends and family to struggle through such an uncertain time in
farming."

1st piglet of 7.

On a happier note, Gussie produced 7 piglets last night. I went up to check at about 1.00 and she was lying with the straw heaped up high on one side, and grunting and groaning. She and Gertie were grunting alternately, with the odd little bark from a piglet. I stayed till the first piglet literally popped out (with a farting noise!). I went into the pen to flatten out the straw as the piglet couldn't climb over it. I made the mistake of touching the piglet, which squealed. Gussie roared and leapt up, I leapt as she leapt. I got a bit of a head butt, but threw myself out of the pen onto the floor. It must have looked very funny. I'm laughing as I type this. Gussie has never been as placid as Gertie, and as a mother she is very defensive, not to say irritable. I woke James up then, and went to bed.

Bill is unwell. He's worked non-stop, seven days a week since he got here, and I hope it is just that he is exhausted. We have been so lucky that he came to help. He is brilliant with all the animals and an even tempered, easy person to have around in a state of siege. We've been too busy today, without him, to have much time for thinking.

We managed to foster the last of the triplets (we've had 8 lots altogether) on to a single today. They were born last night and their mother certainly couldn't cope with three. We'd been topping up their feed all day. A silly gimmer dropped her lamb, without having shown any signs of producing, just five minutes after James had been in the pen. I saw a lamb on the ground and the mother licking its bottom and ran. The membrane was over its face and it would have suffocated. I thought it was dead at first, but got it to breath. There are only 12 sheep left to lamb now.

One of the bigger lambs has watery mouth, so it is having anti-biotic injections and I have tubed electrolyte solution into it. If you catch watery mouth in time they usually recover. It is more worrying than usual when you see a sick lamb now. This has been such a good lambing, so far. We are prepared for problems, of course. In the first few weeks of life there always are some. I don't want to tempt fate, but we have never before been able to foster on all the triplets, and we are not having to bottle feed any lambs. It would have been very satisfying. But as Lisa wrote in an email last night. "Always in our minds is the question, Are we fighting through lambing just to see them all slaughtered. Are we next?". I have put Lisa's email on the famer's email page . Read it. If I was thinking more clearly I would pick more out of it for this page. She talks about " the happy innocent days before the country was sent to the wolves by Tony." It is dificult to think back that far!

I had a lovely poem in the post from Lucy Wilson, age 14. Thank you Lucy. Here are just 2 verses, I'd like to put up more but my typing is too slow. It's a very moving poem.

With outbreaks of foot and mouth
Getting closer every day
As the daughter of a farmer
There's some things I want to say.

All the hours of labour, the effort put in
To keep the farm running well
Dreams are shattered, will the farm stand again?
Only the future can tell.

If I can get it sent by email I'll put it all up. I will forward any emails to her.

James has just sent this fax to Mr Brown (fax number 0207 2388 5727)

Dear Mr Brown

It is not unreasonable, after six weeks of this crisis, to expect you to be able to get the facts on vaccination right. Yet this morning on Radio 4 you repeated the old mantra that vaccination equals slaughter. You must know by now that vaccination does NOT repeat NOT have to be followed by slaughter. I can only conclude either that your "scientific advisers" need to be replaced immediately or that you have some other sinister agenda.

For goodness sake WAKE UP AND GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT before it is too late.

 

8th April

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which supasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Phil 4 v 6-7

Thanks, Cathy. I must remember to hang on to that. I came in here in an inchaote rage and I have just been sitting quietly looking at that text and praying. I do feel more peaceful and more focused. Thanks, God!

We are calling her Baa Baa for obvious reasons!

I'm sitting here with a smile on my face, after reading Debby's verse:

Mr.Blair, Mr. Blair
You say that you care
Yet you slaughter the sheep
and the pigs

Mr.Blair, Mr. Blair
You say that you've farmed !
Only 1 % harmed
Just the ones you
might eat...
so no problem,
just push a button-
DELETE

Mr. Blair, Mr. Blair
FMD , how does it travel?
From the sheep & cattle
only those with
cloven hooves

Mr. Blair , Mr. Blair
It's obvious to farmers
Devil politicians
leave a hell
on earth.

 

7th April

The European Parliament in Strasbourg passed a resolution on Thursday calling for the immediate vaccination of all susceptible animals in regions where disease outbreaks have occurred.

'This should not be simply a 'vaccination to kill policy', but should serve to protect livestock. They furthermore recognised the wrongness of the mass slaughter policy and called for it to end. No return to long term prophylactic vaccination was envisaged. The resolution was opposed by British Labour and Conservative MPs!.......' http://www.efrc.com/fmd/60019.htm

 

I'm afraid I was forgetting that some of you would have checked this site already for news. Sorry! After supper, I went to check the sheep, and had planned to just put up a note saying I was going to bed. I was feeling really tired. I've been angry and sad and anxious all day. I've spent a lot of time on the phone to lovely people who shouldn't be having this happen to them.

I spoke to someone who had their much loved dairy cows shot on Monday and who had had the first bodies (not all) removed today. She heard Tony Blair comparing slaughtered animals to those which would normally be turned into sausagres, last night. She couldn't understand the smugness and ignorance of it.

I listened to the John Peel programme as I was getting up (rather late). There was a very moving audio diary from a woman in Anglesea whose business was suffering badly. She was having to lay off most of her work force and it was very painful. She had a friend whose sheep had been slaughtered. She said that one of the worst bits for her friend was that she had some lambs she was bottle-feeding. She went to give them their last feed and was told not to as they were about to kill them and it really upset her that they had to die with their stomachs empty. Her voice was breaking as she said that bit. Then we went on to the next item, and John Peel said something on the lines of "we're tired of seeing farmers crying over animals that were going to be killed anyway". He said it as though he could assume that most of his listeners felt the same.

I realised very suddenly, and I must be very stupid not to have realised it before, that that is what Blair and his scientist think too. Blair seriously thinks that dairy cows and breeding stock are just that, "stock", no different to the stock in a shop, and as replaceable. I know we have only been farming for a short while, but this year most of our ewes are from our own breeding. The lambs are healthier and stronger. We have two heifers (Daisy and Primrose) of our own breeding, that will calve in June. They are not replaceable. Our bullocks will go for meat at 30 months and our lambs between 6 months and a year. The fact that I know they are going to die then does not mean that I don't delight in seeing them enjoying the life they have. And I take pride in the fact that we are producing good food on land that grows good grass and has an abundance of all the wild life that goes with grazed fields. Death is part of life and life goes on. This slaughter is tearing that apart.

Last night, I went up to the shed at midnight, the moon was glorious, behind scudding clouds, and there was the red glow of the piglets' heat lamp (which they don't lie under) coming from the pig stye. I looked in and Gertie was stretched out, snoring, with her piglets beside her, and Gussie snoring in unison with her from the pen opposite. The shed was full of little peaceful noises, a lamb bleating, a mother answering, the cows breathing and groaning and snuffling, another little outbreak of bleats, then quiet. I knelt in a pen milking the mother of the sick lamb, and wondered if those politicians and experts would think me a fool to be spending so much wasted effort on less than 1% of my lambs. The lamb was still very weak, and I tubed a syringe full of milk into it. We have been feeding it a little every 3 hours or so. It died this afternoon. It never did have much of a chance, but we couldn't have just left it to die without trying.

It's after midnight and I've just come down from the shed. There's a strong, very cold, wind and the moon is so bright you can scarcely see the stars. I didn't need to use the torch up the track. All is peaceful up there.

I didn't have a sleep as planned earlier this evening because I was so angry I stopped feeling sleepy. I never realised before how useful anger is. It's amazingly energising, I can feel it like a great engine revving up inside me.( At least, I did earlier, when I was writing emails!) I had checked my emails and there was an answer to one I wrote to Ben Gill at the end of March, in response to his statement "the NFU has warned that vaccinations are not the solution". Basically, they were repeating the same old lies. Mr Gill said in this weeks 'NFU Business', "we consider every option to eradicate this scourge" and produced a highly missleading graph with no mention of the thousands of farms with uninfected animals that will be wiped out. Have you noticed that MAFF are not publishing a list of the farms that are having their animals slaughtered in the contiguous cull? One wonders if MAFF and NFU head office's brief is merely to reduce the headline number of infected farms regardless of the fact that the total number of slaughtered animals will be greater.

It is a fearful responsibility to know that if your farm is infected your neighbours will go too. In some places that could mean 20,000 animals (as it nearly did in one place, where, fortunately, a second vet was able to insist it was a misdiagnosis). This brave new policy, tough and decisive and "essential" for eradicating the disease, is impossible to implement properly anyway. They came with 50 bullets to kill 4,500 pigs on one farm, and they haven't finished killing there yet, a week later. Bodies are still lying on farms, days and days later.

On one farm, animals killed because they were contiguous, the bodies are slowly being moved. "They must be killed in case they are infected". And to the farmer, "you can't leave the farm until all the bodies are gone, and the farm disinfected". And to the public who are protesting "The carcasses are not infected, it's quite safe to move them down into Cornwall to burn them".

I only read yesterday's paper today. A farmer, a woman in her sixties, has already spent eight days alone on her farm with a policeman on the gate, whilst her animals were tested. Three days after the all clear her sheep were found to have it after all. Now she has been shut on her farm for another week, again with a policeman on the gate, because, though they took the infected sheep away, there are some cows lying dead in a field a mile from her house, and nothing can be done till they are removed.

I must go to bed. When lambing is finished I'll be able to think straighter.

6th April

We've lambed almost a third of our little flock (84 Lleyn ewes and gimmers) in the last 3 days. We did put a 'teaser' (vasectomised ram) in with the ewes for a couple of weeks before the rams went in. I've just come down from there. I'm just writing this to say we're OK and then I'll write more up there. There's a lot to say.

"Mrs Thatcher had the Falklands - Tony Blair has Foot - and - Mouth disease. Electoral advantage will have been gained from both….." from an email I got this morning.

I wrote this yesterday, but didn't have time to type it:

I'm sitting in the straw again -- the ewe we call 'Little Bear' is lambing. (There's another having twins in the next pen). There's the usual racket as it's feeding time, but the cows stopped bellowing yesterday. I'm keeping most of my attention on Little Bear as I want to catch her water bag in a bucket. Our 'confused' triplet from a day or so ago has been rejected yet again. It's managing to nip in and get a drink whenever its foster mother's attention is distracted, but it is not easy for it and it will be much more difficult when it is out in the field. We have to plan ahead, as if they will go out in the field one day. I saw the robin earlier. It flew in with a beak full of moss. It never flies straight to its nest, but perches on a hurdle and looks around first.

I made the mistake of playing back the news on the BBC web site. Anderson saying "The most important aspect is the culling of contiguous farms….it is the most important facet….that policy must be applied very vigourously.." and "it is clearly very distressing to have dead animals lying on farms …. all of us are disturbed by these scenes.." and then he dismisses the importance of disposing of the bodies quickly. I found it very, very chilling. Our Government is happily following the advise of this man. Whose advise do they follow when human lives are concerned?

I'm doing some horrible sums. Suppose there are only another 1,000 farms infected, that's another 4 to 11 farms taken out with the contiguous cull (The cull at Camworthy took out 11 farms). The average seems to be 1,000 animals per farm. The average number of contiguous farms culled is, say, seven. That's 7 million animals killed to save "the experts," and the Government from admitting they were wrong.

Hugo Young wrote a good article in the Guardian on the 3rd:
"This episode is, and will continue to be, dominated by spinning. Even more than most in modern times, it's one where perception is political reality. Mr. Blair wants to be responsible, but even more to look respectable. He wants to get foot and mouth under control, but above all to make people think he has done. "

I am quite sure that when this is brought under control, Mr. Blair will get the credit for it, no matter that the pile of bodies is a thousand, thousand times bigger than it could have been. Indeed, the bigger the pile, the better he will end up looking!

James's bit:

"We received some official advice from the Government on the April 1st. It says:

A). Do not graze cattle and sheep together.

B). Do not graze cattle and sheep in adjoining fields.

Do these people never stop to think before they issue one of their utterances? What they say sounds perfectly sensible at first sight. But in fact, at best, it is a waste of time, and at worst, it will lead to yet more unnecessary slaughter.

Just stop to consider for a moment. If the cattle and sheep are both mine, and if one group gets FMD, then they will all be slaughtered regardless, whether they have been grazing the same field or different fields at opposite ends of the farm. Then again, if the cattle are mine and the sheep are my neighbours, grazing the field next door (or vice versa), it still makes no difference. Under the" bold, decisive" contiguous cull policy, they will likewise al be slaughtered if either I or my neighbour gets FMD.

The sensible thing is actually to do the exact opposite of what the government advises: positively put cattle with sheep. Since FMD is hard to spot in sheep, but shows itself clearly in cattle, having some "sentinel" cows in with a group of sheep will effectively demonstrate whether the sheep have FMD. If they do, we all know what has to be done. If they don't then an unnecessary contiguous cull will be avoided.

Several bodies, including the NFU, suggested this to the government weeks ago as a way to limit the terrible slaughter which is taking place in Cumbria. (It would have been easy to bring in cull dairy cows from a non-infected area if necessary.) Result? Precisely nothing. This was a bit of lateral thinking too far for this government and its advisers."

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I heard Joyce Quinn on the Today programme this morning. She was asked why the army were not brought in sooner. She said they brought the army in "as soon as we knew the extent of the problem". Are politicians just misinformed fools or are they liars?

We have 95 lambs now (don't laugh, those of you who have hundreds!), and I am up here again whilst James and Bill eartag, dock tails and castrate (done with thick rubber bands and it must be done in the first week) . It's very peaceful, except for the bleating of a mother while her lamb disappears for a minute or two. The lambs are jumping on straw bales that we have put in the pens. I could watch them for hours, as they play 'king of the castle'. One has just slipped off backwards, legs in the air. Now he's back up, and leaning down to head but a bigger lamb on the ground. Most of the cows are lying down. They and their calves have adjusted already to being opposite sides of a hurdle. Just been a pause while a gimmer had a nice big ewe lamb.

I was phoned this morning by a farmer up the road, asking if we'd lost a bullock. Apparently one was trotting up the road towards us. I ran and made sure the gate from the road was shut properly. Then my neighbour rang with the same news. It was a strange feeling, being so frightened of a stray bullock. Normally we would be ready to go out and turn it into a field to keep it safe till its owner was found. Now, no farmer would go near it. Inexcusably, it had escaped from the abattoir half a mile away.

We had our first casualty last night. One of the ewes expecting triplets didn't notice when she had the first one, and James, who had checked her less than five minutes before, couldn't resuscitate it. She then had two bigger lambs without seeming to notice either. Ewes are like that sometimes. The little sick one was hyperthermic yesterday morning, it is still alive under a lamp, but it is very weak. If it lives it will never come to much in a commercial sense, but it still feels right to put as much time and effort into keeping it alive as possible.

The robin has just flown up to its nest after perching on a hurdle in front of me, its beak full of hay, looking around with jerky movements, for about five minutes.

Little bear and the triplet, accepted at last.

I keep getting interrupted up here. Its feeding time again and the noise is deafening. The twin sister of the ewe that has just lambed is starting to lamb too. (W 102 and W103), so I'm now sitting on a straw bale in the corner of the pen with W102 and looking across at W103 to see what she's doing. It's just a little difficult to concentrate on what I'm writing. The sun has come out again. The sky keeps darkening and we have a very heavy shower and a strong wind, and ten minutes later it dies down again and the sun comes out, and then ten minutes later we have the wind and rain again. Little Bear is in the next pen and the "now, not-so-confused" triplet is having a good drink. I'd be surprised if she rejects him now, but it is still possible. And now it's later still. I left the shed and came down to cook supper and put some of this up, and I'm feeling very cross with myself, because I'd forgotten it was Friday and I missed the ITN website deadline and now there's nothing till Monday.

W103 surprised us all by having a black lamb. She's a registered Lleyn ewe and her half-brother was a champion. Lleyn sheep are not meant to be black. Black noses and black spots on the ears, but the rest should be white. The poor gimmer was terrified of her lamb to start with. James sat in the pen with her for two hours, as she'd lick the lamb, and then every time it tried to stand up, she would head butt it really hard. The little ewe lamb is lovely and we will keep it (if we keep any stock). It won't be registered though.

Tony Blair was on the news earlier. He was saying "let's get this into perspective. We are only talking about 1% of the livestock farms in the country ..... In the weeks since this began we have only slaughtered as many animals as normally go through the food chain in a week". How dare he? I am too angry to write coherently. To say "only" when he is talking about the total collapse of the rural economy in so much of the country. To dismiss the loss of precious bloodlines and loved breeding and milking stock as if they were pounds of sausages. The crasssness is umbelievable. If my Clover, and Buttercup, Gertie and Little Bear, were lying dead in the yard with "blood and that running everywhere" (to quote a farmer I was talking to tonight), what would it feel like to know that my Prime Minister, who is "throwing all our resources" into tackling foot-and -mouth, was such a blinkered and insensitive idiot?

5th April

"Scary how the country seems to have been so efficiently mesmerised and manipulated."
from an email this morning.

It's a wet horrible day and I am feeling very depressed about the "new policy" for tackling FMD. But more about that later.

Gertie has had ten piglets! They are gorgeous. I have just been with her, saying "you clever, clever thing"" and "oh you little darlings", over and over. She is lying flat out, grunting softly and happily and these little things, with silky satiny coats and dark shiny eyes are climbing over each other to suck at her teats. Wonderful. I'm just downloading some pictures and I'll put them up. (A bit anxious about the computer as it wouldn't start to begin with, making very strange noises). James woke me just after 5.00 am as he thought I'd like to know Gertie was farrowing. Even for all of you reading this I was not getting up then!

Watching the news last night was deeply depressing. The Chief Scientist and Professor Anderson from Imperial College are wrong. They are basing their advice on computer models of the disease that have the wrong information programmed into them. It is alarming seeing supposedly very clever men , scientists, being so unscientific. They can see that the disease is spreading from farm to farm, yes. They are recommending that diseased animals are culled in 24 hours, yes (and wasn't this the recomendation in the first place?). They are saying that all farms that share a boundary with the infected farm should have theri animals killed, NO NO NO. Of course if you kill all the animals in an area the disease will be stopped. Why not look at why it is spreading to neighbouring farms, first? It is spreading because of contacts through gates and fences, carrion taking infected pieces of carcass, possibly in the smoke from bonfires, and from large numbers of infected animals being left for days to excrete the virus into the air. Why not tackle those conditions first? There is evidence here on the ground that where all those criteria are dealt with properly, the disease does not spread. It is almost as though they believe in Black Magic. It is a virus. The virus needs to make contact with the animal. Scientific fact.

The virus will spread and they will kill more and more animals and when the infection finally dies down they will say "it was because we were so tough." and I fear that a lot of people will be fooled. John Tribble had his cows killed no, wrong way of putting it, John Tribble and his brother had to help kill his own cows as there were only two people sent to do it, six days ago. He believed it was necessary to stop infection spreading to his neighbours even though his animals weren't infected ("The Ministry said they had to go"). His animals had been checked every other day by a Ministry vet for weeks (it's very easy to spot in cows). His neighbour who kept sheep (it's difficult to spot in sheep) hadn't been inspected once, and called the vet when he saw suspicious symptons. He had FMD. So John Tribble's cows that had had no contact and were uninfected are dead. His other neighbour's sheep which could touch noses with the infected sheep are still alive. They will be killed, but by the time they are, they will probably be showing signs of the disease and their neighbours on the other side will have to go. Does this make any sort of sense to you, so far?

John Tribble sprayed his poor cows with disinfectant and waited for someone to come and remove them. He is still waiting. He has telephoned and left messages and waited for a reply. He is still waiting. His cows weren't infected so it doesn't matter. They are dead and are safe from being infected by the rotting bodies of his neighbour's sheep that are still lying where they were left a week ago, without even having some token disinfectant poured over them. Yes, ProfessorAnderson and Chief Scientist (what is your name, David King?) your firewall will work. You need to shield the virus from spreading with millions of uninfected bodies and broken lives. It will work. Some where on your computer models isn't there room for a little common sense?

Quote from Anthony Gibson again:

"As it turns out, you would have had a better chance of succeeding in an appeal against one of Stalin’s edicts than you have of winning exemption from the contiguous cull. Now that would be understandable (just) if the justice was universally rough. But there have been several examples (Monkleigh being the most obvious) where sheep on a farm which was not technically contiguous have represented a much greater disease threat, but have not been taken. Result: unnecessary slaughter of healthy cattle, and spread of disease, leading to further unnecessary slaughter and so on."

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Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to go on the heights.

Hab. 3 17- 19

Read this aloud. Reading it quietly to yourself is not the same. Read it aloud and you will be there with the man who wrote it, more than two thousand years ago............. and be there with the farmers who are saying it now, in faith, but with their voices breaking.

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I have been telephoning or emailing any farmers I know (and some I don't). I know from myself that we feel very isolated from the world just now. It is wonderful to get all your emails. If you know a farmer, even if you don't know him well, telephone, write or email. It doesn't need to be more than a brief word. Write to a farmer that you've read about in the paper. You don't know what a difference it will make.

"We took on board what you said about telephoning a farmer near to you just to let them know we are supporting them and so we telephoned one of our local farmers who lives no more than quarter of a mile away from us. She was so delighted to speak to us. She told us that she has "battened down the hatches" and won't allow anyone onto her farm. She said that there are times when she feels so alone and gets depressed at the thought of what might come and it was just nice to hear a voice on the other end of the telephone." (an email received on the 26th March.

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Cathy's emails

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Cathy is a sheep farmer with a prize winning flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep in South Devon. She has been sending me wonderfuly heartening emails, full of hope and faith and stories of her animals. Click here to read them.

Home Emails I have had from other farmers If you have anything to say about farming

Please email a message (rather than phone). I might not reply but it makes me feel less isolated. Everyone round here is being wonderfully supportive, but no-one is visiting farms at the moment , no-one would want to be the means of spreading infection (except see 4th March). It is wonderful though how very kind people here are.

For some pictures of the animals inside click here.

More Pictures taken 1st March 2001.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/speakout/farmers.shtml is a forum with several devon farmers writing in.

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