Too late to save 300 calves sent to slaughter

Ashburton dairy farmer Frank Peters says it’s a crime his calves are going off to slaughter just before the Government makes a big call on how to deal with the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis.

He is resigned to the fact that the animals earmarked for culling will not be spared.

‘‘Right now we’ve got autumn calves loading out and the guys are telling us ‘wow, what beautiful calves’.

‘‘Whatever comes on Monday, they’ll be looking ahead and not in the rear-vision mirror, so the ones that are going will be going,’’ Peters said.

Whether the Government decides to fully eradicate or manage the disease today, the order to destroy their livestock has taken an emotional and financial toll on a number of farmers, Peters among them.

In March, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) announced 22,300 cattle would be culled off 22 farms.

Peters was in tears when he sent the first of his cows from his $4 million herd to the freezing works.

Peters bought them four years ago – he can name the precise date, April 2, 2014 – from Southern Dairies, owned by Alfons and Gea Zeestraten of Southland.

‘‘We’ve had no clinical signs of M. bovis in four years, there was no mastitis we couldn’t get rid of, there was no ill health, nothing. If you look after your cows you won’t see this disease.’’

After extensive testing, including two rounds of blood tests and one of milk, just one cow tested positive for the disease.

‘‘If that milk test from that one cow had gone clear, all our cows would be still sitting here and we’d be milking them quite happily,’’ Peters said.

But it was enough for MPI to order 700 cows and 300 calves to be killed. Peters has been allowed to keep a winter milking herd, which is providing him with cashflow while he starts to work on the paperwork for compensation.

As a farmer, Peters is no slouch, his cows producing an average of between 500-540 kilograms of milksolids each. That compares with the national average of 372 kg/ms.

He bets the Government will decide to manage the disease, rather than have a massive cull.

‘‘Why do we cull these cows when there’s more information to be gained from leaving them? What are we learning about the disease?

‘‘I hope they’ll go for long-term management. They need to take a breath, and then make a decision. Give it back to the industry to sort out, MPI need to pack their lunch and go back to looking after the borders,’’ Peters said.

He has read up on the Australian experience, where they appear to have a harsher strain of M. bovis, and yet there it is managed, with about 3.5 per cent of the national herd infected.

The experience has worn him down, but there’s hope around the corner.

‘‘We’ve got a new spring herd coming on, we’ve got a son and daughter-in-law who are passionate about the industry, and they’ve let us carry on with our winter herd to give us some cashflow.’’

South Canterbury farmers Aad and Wilma van Leeuwen, on whose Morven farm the disease was first detected in July last year, have also spoken about the impact it has had on them.

They told one media outlet they were threatened with jail by MPI when they refused to allow further testing on their farms.

However, Wilma clarified it was not a direct threat from MPI.

‘‘We were told in an email if we didn’t abide by their regulations, we would be open for prosecution. We went to our lawyers and they said it could mean a fine or we could go to jail,’’ van Leeuwen said.

An MPI spokeswoman said officials had been dealing with the van Leeuwens over the last couple of weeks in order to carry out sampling on one of their farms so as to have confidence to lift the controls on that farm.

‘‘They have not been co-operative but we have not threatened them with jail,’’ she said.

Wilma van Leeuwen said the van Leeuwen Group of 16 farms had 4500 milking cows left, from an original total of almost 12,000.