A not so happy start to 2017 at Greenwell – as the harsh realities of farming on Dartmoor take their toll….

1. wrote last time about our looming TB test due in February/March and the optimistic thought that maybe we would go clear for another year. Sadly we didn’t even get to the test. One of our cattle, whilst being inspected by a vet post mortem in an abattoir, had inflamed lymph nodes in its head. This is enough for the vet to suspect TB and this triggered a shut down on the farm with no cattle being allowed to move or be sold. I received a call on the Tuesday before Christmas informing me of this and over the past month we have had to test every animal on the farm - well over 600 animals in total. ‘Merry Christmas’ I thought to myself as the reality hit like an anvil. I was plunged back to our last outbreak which shut us down for 12 months and cost us dearly in time, cash flow and stress. Once the dates were set for the tests, the realisation that my brother now had to cancel his family holiday didn’t go down well, but it’s that or get fined thousands of pounds.

The next job was to find out what happened to the cow that has caused all these problems. Fortunately with just enlarged lymph nodes in the head, it was fine for human consumption - a huge relief that the £1000 beef carcass was not a write-off. They are currently culturing the samples taken in a lab to establish whether it was even TB. All of this takes about 3 months in total and in the meantime the assumption is that we have TB and are therefore under restriction. We can now only sell direct to slaughter until we complete three full herd tests at least 60 days apart. The whole herd were tested in January, which was not too bad as all the cattle are in the barns and close to hand. They then have to be tested again in April. This proves a nightmare for the cows as they will have started to calve so will either have baby calves at foot or be heavily pregnant. It will also be peak lambing season, an incredibly busy time for us with precious little time to spare and TB testing just adding to the pressure. Then tested again in July which will bring further problems because at this time of the year the cattle are out in the fields and on the open moor, grazing in numerous small herds stretched from Lamerton to Princetown to Meavy. It will be a logistical nightmare. Throughout it will inflict significant stress on the animals which will affect their growth and ability to thrive and fatten. It will add to our already busy work load, adding approximately 18 days work (for 4 people) to our year which all adds to our costs with no compensation, always with the looming cloud of more reactors and fines if we don’t complete the tests on time. Happy new year!

On a lighter and more positive note, the weather has been fantastic! Autumn and winter so far have been a gift making life so much easier for both us and the animals - especially the pregnant ewes that are still out enjoying the sun. They are now all scanned, to tell the number of lambs each is carrying, ready for lambing season which is looming on the horizon. We housed over 1000 ewes last spring because the weather and the ground conditions were so wet. This year hopefully more ewes will stay out in the fields to lamb as this is still the best option for our type of hill ewes. Just as long as they stay fit and they have plenty of feed, they should be fine.

That said we will still be housing several ewes and myself and my team are very much looking forward to seeing you all at ‘Greenwell Lambing live’. Once again Gemma and I will be welcoming families, schools, colleges and groups into our lambing shed to experience the magic of lambing at this wonderful time of year. We do hope you’ll come along and join us!

Mat Cole

Greenwell Farm, Dartmoor