Farmer Focus : Wilbert Girvan 08/04/05

AS I WRITE this, the first of this year’s lambs are just beginning to appear. Our policy of moving ewes round available grazing throughout winter has worked rather too well, as they are coming to lambing carrying too much condition.

For the past 10 days, ewes have been balancing on the thin line between too much intake causing prolapse and too little intake causing twin lamb disease.

Cows have come through winter well and are generally looking in just the right condition as they come to calving. About a month ago I noticed a cow was rapidly losing condition. Fluke was suspected, as she developed a small pouch under her jaw and a dung sample proved positive. The vet’s advice was to treat all cows with a flukicide injection.

In all my farming years I have been lucky to never before encounter fluke problems, but just like the overfat ewes I will file the knowledge under my hat and like every farmer resolve to do better next year.

A visiting group of farmers from south-west Scotland drew my attention to how much depreciation was costing our suckler herd. Bulling heifers join the herd with a value of £1000, in contrast to the small compensation we receive when any cows are culled prematurely and can only go on the OTMS.

Like every UK cattle farmer, I look forward to the ending of the farcical OTM scheme and hope one day our more mature cattle will achieve their real market value.

However, I dread the mayhem that will ensue if a single date is set and all OTM beef floods on to the market, destabilising the price and giving the tabloid press a field day telling the public they are now being fed old cows.

A five-year-old child could devise a simple formula where the 30-month limit was exchanged, for example, with 48 months and so on until all the beef had been phased in seamlessly over a period of time – a year to 18 months.