Testing for TB in Cattle

Almost 270,000 cows have been culled in the last eight years.  Click on the image for more information

I went for a walk today and met some neighbours en route.  “Are you doing the circuit?  Because they’ve been moving the cows and they are all gathered around the gate into the wood.  SUCH a nuisance!  I really don’t like walking through them.  I don’t know why they’ve put them there.”

I knew.

It means that testing for bovine TB has come around again.  The inconvenience of walking through a herd of cows pales into insignificance compared with the business of carrying out the testing.  It takes the best part of a day or two and happens many times a year….for we are in a bovine TB hotspot.

I haven’t yet written about bovine TB because the whole thing does, I admit, make me very angry.  I have read the opinion that it does not matter if cows are sacrificed because they are going to die anyway.  But the productive lifespan of a dairy cow can easily be 14 years.  And although cows may look the same to us laymen and women, the farmer knows them all as individuals.

Many dairymen are reluctant to let a relief farmhand do even a single milking because each and every cow is individually inspected when she comes in to be milked.  The dairyman feeds each according to her needs (which can vary considerably) and notices if she is offcolour – a possible precursor to mastitis.  With the profit margins so tight even the smallest delay in picking up a problem can make the difference between profit and loss.

It has often been joked around Cerne Abbas over Christmas that everyone else knows your business before you do.  But there is a perplexing gap when it comes to the farmers amongst us (who are VERY few these days.)  I was asked to start this blog in order that that gap may begin to be bridged.  These people are growing our food on our behalf.  I for one am deeply grateful that if it is wet and horrible I can stay in.  Those who grow our food do not have that choice.

The least we can do is be informed about the issues which affect them on a daily basis.  This link takes you to the UK government’s policy on bovine TB from 2010 to 2015.  This link takes you to a list of current government policies and reports on the subject.

This link takes you to an interactive map which enables you to see for yourself where TB outbreaks are.  They are very patchy.  But you can easily see how big the problem is in the southwest  – thousands of cases as opposed to tens (or fewer) everywhere else.

 

 

How can Humans Eat Grass?

Every summer I mark GCSE Biology examinations, and every year I end up really depressed when I mark the agriculture or food question.  In a nutshell, the average British 16 year old – if what they write in this national examination is to be believed – has learnt that livestock farming has nothing good to offer society.  According to the 1500 or so exams I have read in the last three years, the majority of British 16 year olds believe that

• farmers rear animals indoors because they enjoy (or at best don’t care) making animals unhappy,
• everyone, human and livestock, would be better off if we were all vegetarian because then food would not be wasted on animals:  humans could eat animal food and that would be much more efficient,
• possibly best of all would be if we grew all our protein in large silos in the form of fungus (this is what makes Quorn) because it protects farmland and has a much higher protein content than meat.

As is so often the case, there are grains of truth in all these which have been grotesquely distorted.  Some may be put down to adolescent inattention or intellectual incapacity, but strikingly similar arguments crop up in batches and frequently, which implies that the teacher has at best a poor understanding of the topic and at worst an ‘agenda’.

Aberdeen Angus in the water meadow, Lleyn sheep on the hill

This photograph would not be possible in a society where no one ate meat.  I have read exam scripts in which it appears young people are being encouraged to think that if no one ate meat then farm animals would be left to live to a ripe old age in bucolic bliss.  They are also being given the impression that all livestock are fed entirely on grains which could also feed humans.  This may be true of the great stockyards of the United States, but in this country a significant part of the nutrient intake of cows and sheep is grass.

Feeding livestock with grass is a way of using land which could not be used for anything else.  The water meadow could flood.  The hill in the background is rather steep.  So both would probably be unsuitable for arable crops.  And even arable fields periodically need a rest:  a grass ley provides this as part of a crop rotation.

There is a ‘grain’ of truth in the argument that feeding grain to livestock is not the most energy-efficient (in terms of calorific content) way of growing food.  Dairy cattle in particular need extra inputs to enable them to make the many litres of milk that they produce each day.  Maybe the best compromise would be to keep using these excellent converters of grass into human food, but moderate our meat and dairy product intake whilst doing a better job of consuming the ‘5 a day’ of fruit and veg!

What do cows eat in the Winter? Part 2 Eating outdoors

Every year in the UK one hears stories about the RSPCA or police being called by a concerned member of the public because’there are cows standing in a muddy field with no grass’.

Of course cows can be, and are, put out into grassy fields in the winter.  These are usually sown with a ryegrass ley and this download can tell you more about the management of this.

However, the alternative ‘fresh’ food is provided by brassica crops which are sown as part of the crop rotation.  There are a variety of these, and you can learn more about them in this download.  The ones currently being grown in the valley include forage rape, kale, and turnips.  The cows eat the foliage and, in the case of turnips, the roots as well.  

An electric fence is used to partition off strips in order to be able to periodically provide fresh strips of pasture.  So if you see cows in a muddy field, look closely at what has been planted there.  It may be that they are at the end of a day grazing kale.  

Or it may be that they are grazing a root forage crop, have eaten the foliage, and are now down to the sweetest part of the plant – the root!

What do cows eat in the winter? part 1 Eating Indoors

One reason why farmers are so busy in the summer is that they are having to grow most of the food that the cows and sheep will eat in the winter when nothing much grows.

Even though it’s the winter, the cows (and the bacteria in their rumens!) like grass.  As any gardener knows, the grass doesn’t grow much in the winter so the cows need to be given grass preserved in some way – either dried (hay) or pickled (silage).  Silage is a lot more palatable because it is moist and it is also more nutritious.

The key to making good silage is to exclude the air so that the carbohydrates in the grass ferment rather than decompose.

Grass may be ‘ensiled’ by packing it into a silo or by rolling it up into large bales covered with plastic to keep the air out. This favours the growth of acid-making bacteria such as Lactobacillus, and the weak acids they make preserve the grass and its nutrients.  Another species of Lactobacillus plays a similar role in the making of yogurt and cheese.

Another form of silage is made using chopped maize plants and ‘wholecrop’ wheat.  The maize and wheat are harvested using a ‘forage harvester‘.  It gathers the crop in a similar way to a combine and then chops the plants and blows them into a trailer.  The chopped plants are then put into a ‘clamp’ and packed down to exclude air by driving the tractor over them.

In addition to silage, which is largely composed of fibrous cellulose, farmers give their stock ‘concentrates’ to enable faster growth and milk production by providing extra protein and carbohydrates. Concentrates are comprised of rolled barley (which is home-grown), and soya bean and molasses which are bought in.

The maize/wholecrop silage, rolled barley, soya, and molasses are combined in a ‘mixer wagon’ and taken to the feeding areas.  Judging by the eagerness of the cows, it’s pretty tasty!

Why are the cows put into barns over the winter?

This year’s calves….tomorrow’s dairy herd

The long summer is over, the rains have come, some mornings there is a light frost, and it’s time to bring the cows in.

When I asked a local farmer why the cows are brought in, the first thing he said is, “Because otherwise they get miserable.”

A miserable cow is an unproductive cow.

Although sheep, thanks to their thick woolly coats, seem fairly impervious to the weather, cows  do not like the cold and wet.  They will huddle together, in or by a thicket for shelter if possible.  They lose condition because energy from their food is being spent to keep them warm.  Their milk yield decreases for the same reason or, if they are beef cattle, they do not put on weight so quickly.

At the same time, as any gardener knows, the grass has stopped growing so livestock need to be fed.  The shortened grass is more of a problem for cows than for sheep because of the way they eat.  Sheep have a very mobile upper lip which they use to gather up a bit of grass and then nip it off with their incisors.  Cows rely on using their tongues to grasp a clump of grass and then bite it off. The lack of grass together with the need for more food to keep warm means they need to be fed, and that feed needs to be carted from the yard where it is stored up to the field…the first reason why it is simply easier, less exhausting and time consuming, and more cost effective to feed cows in barns in the yard.

Another reason is that cows can get so miserable and cold that they simply will not come when summoned by the horn of the Land Rover.  Sheep do.

The short days mean that the sun rises after the morning milking has finished, and it sets before the afternoon milking:  this leaves little time for the multiplicity of jobs so saving some time by having the cows in helps.  Some herds are kept in the whole time until March but the local herd is allowed out to play after the morning milking and brought in for the night at the afternoon milking.  Milking is an essential opportunity for the welfare of the individual cows to be checked.  Imagine checking a herd on a dark, wet, and stormy night on a muddy hill.  Imagine trying to help a cow in distress in those conditions!  All much easier for both humans and cows if they are inside.

There is also the welfare of the pasture to consider.  As the grass is not growing and it is very wet, ‘poaching’ can occur. When soil becomes poached it is compacted with no air spaces to nurture the soil organisms and microbes that help maintain a healthy sward.  The grass will  not grow so well, and the turf will become full of hardy weeds.

So for the welfare of the grass, the cows, and the humans working with them the cows are brought in in the winter.