It can be an incredibly testing time for a Tb-hit farm
Derbyshire’s NFU advisor ANDREW CRITCHLOW, explains the stress and sleepless nights which come before BTB test day
IT’S 5.45am on a pitch black and bitterly cold winter’s morning in the Peak District and two dairy farming brothers are anxious. They have every right to be; it’s Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) jab test day.
“I want to get through this as efficiently as I can. You’re definitely going to hear some swearing!” warns one.
He and his family have lost sleep over this most gutwrenching, stress-inducing and invasive event.
They’ve been here before. It’s the fourth test the brothers’ herd has undergone in just eight months. The prize for passing? Simply the right to return to trading normally.
The farm went down with BTB in April last year with one reactor, which meant a compulsory follow-up gamma test, alongside a skin test.
The skin test was clear, which led to some tentative optimism, but the family’s worst fears were realised when they got the call to tell them they were set to lose more than 30 animals of all ages after the blood results came back – a devastating blow, coupled with the farm essentially being on lockdown for months.
So there’s everything riding on these tests.
The vet conducting the test, along with one of the brothers who is manning the crush, is at the business end of the day’s proceedings.
He shaves with unerring precision two spots on each animal’s neck before measuring the thickness of the skin with a pair of callipers.
He then injects avian tuberculin in the higher spot and bovine tuberculin on the lower spot. The farmer’s wife records the details manually into the farm’s record book while a farm worker and the farmer’s teenage children usher the herd through the crush.
There’s a distinct rhythm to the day, perhaps reflective of the amount of times they have had to endure this ordeal.
But it’s not just the practical and preparatory elements of the day that play on the mind – it’s the result and its impact that looms on the horizon, too.
“It’s just a constant niggle at the back of your mind; are we going to go clear?” the farmer said.
“If we go down this time that’s another 120 days minimum that we’ll be shut down for. Where would I keep all that stock? I don’t know what we’d do. It doesn’t bear thinking about, to be honest. It’s like having Covid lockdown on your business every time this happens, some farms have had this many times over.
Extra cattle means extra feed, extra bedding, extra work – with nothing coming back in because you can’t trade normally.”
Cow bloodlines, expanded over the years with careful
breeding, can also be wiped out in a single stroke if the test result goes the wrong way.
“We’ve got a book dating back to 1970 with every animal born on this farm in it,” he said.
“The depth of the families is there to see and when you start losing them, you’ve nowhere to go; generations of breeding out of the window.
“Frustration. Anger. Your head’s scrambled when something like that happens.”
After four hours and 10 minutes, having gone through the entire 350-strong herd, the test is over. But now begins the anguish of waiting for the results in three days’ time. Mercifully, with palpable relief from the brothers, it’s good news. “I’m over the moon, ecstatic, relieved. It’s relief more than anything; we can move stuff and trade again,” said one.
“Once we were told we were clear I called the ministry and we got the nod at 11.30 that morning. Since then we’ve had some very full days; 115 of the herd have left home or come home to calve. The first job was to move all our youngstock to the farm where we rear them and bring some in-calf heifers back and then attend the Leek dairy sales.
“We’re busy with lots of paperwork for passports and movements, but it’s worth the wait!”