Farmer Focus Livestock: Murray Garrett sees speedy lambing

I must start by congratulating the team at Farmers Weekly for getting Nick Herbert, the shadow environment minister, to state on the record his support for a wildlife cull as part of a national TB control strategy.

There is now clear blue water between the two main parties on this issue and a chance for us all to pressurise our prospective parliamentary candidates and make sure they realise the situation is untenable. Every MP’s overriding priority is winning votes, even more than accumulating expenses.

What is it about Devon? Since our move here in 2005 I have lost count of the number of tractor and implement hydraulic hoses that have developed leaks and needed replacing, most of these conveniently occurring at weekends or on bank holidays. I am now on first-name terms with Terry at his Hatherleigh workshop.

Our lambing was all completed in the month of March and the good weather has helped. Things did not start well, with a larger-than-normal number of ewes achieving their lifetime’s ambition. I had originally suspected listeria and changed over from baled silage to hay as a result. But a couple of ewes have shown arthritic symptoms recently and septicaemia may be to blame.

I am in two minds with regard to entering the Farmers Weekly Arable Farmer of the Year award. True we have had two successive harvests of catastrophic yields, but there must be some points for perseverance in the face of adversity surely? Can the judging not take into account “level of difficulty”, for example, like the Olympic diving competition? Arable cropping on the fens would thereby equate to a simple plunge in stark contrast to our backward triple summersault with pike in the shadow of Dartmoor.