Producers suffer as winter returns to NE England
The north east of England has been hit by atrocious weather, making life difficult for livestock and arable farmers alike.
Among the worst-affected areas this week were Northumberland, Co Durham and N Yorks, where non-stop driving rain and freezing temperatures resulted in some farmers losing up to 30 lambs in one night.
Hill farmers unable to bring their sheep and lambs inside have been particularly badly-hit.
NFU north east spokeswoman Rachael Gilbanks said farmers were now battling to minimise any further losses by moving their livestock indoors or to drier fields wherever they could – or by fitting them with plastic survival jackets.
“It isn’t just shepherds who have been struggling,” she said. “Arable farmers are also being disrupted, with crops like sugar beet suffering badly.”
Malcolm Corbett, a Northumberland hill farmer and NFU livestock delegate for the region, said: “Thursday night was a real killer. I have been talking to some farmers who say they have lost between 20 and 30 lambs that night alone. Lambs can stand the cold if it is dry and they don’t mind the wet so long as it’s warm but when you get a combination of bad weather like we have got at the moment, then it takes its toll.”
Farmers elsewhere in the country have been reporting difficult conditions on the Talking Points section of FW”s website www.fwi.co.uk
One farmer, signing himself Jim F, wrote: “Today we’ve had very cold strong wind, horizontal rain, sleet and snow. The land is so wet we can’t roll the grassland, plough or even spread fertiliser at the moment and normally we have a drier farm. The only consolation is we haven’t any ewes and lambs, but loads of other farmers in the area have.”
Others report that they have been unable to put their cows out yet, while arable farmers have reported that they have been getting stuck crossing waterlogged fields with chain harrows.
