FARMER FOCUS: Heartache at Partridge Farm
When I agreed to write for Farmer Focus I promised myself I would always remain positive. But after the past couple of weeks I’ve realised the food we all produce comes at huge cost and heartache. Perhaps we need to find better ways of portraying this to the general public.
Our annual TB test proved to be the first of the bad news, with five inconclusives; we are nervously awaiting their retest in 60 days. For the first time for many years I felt everything was in place for a good lambing. The ewes were in great condition, scanning had gone really well and apart from not too much grass what could possibly go wrong?
The first day of lambing we were greeted by at least 20cm of snow with drifts making it impossible to get around the fields.
Damage limitation is the only way to describe our stockmanship, and my thanks go to both Ryan and Andrew for their hard work and commitment through this difficult time. Needless to say losses have been substantial and only when lambing is truly over will we know their full extent.
I am also fully aware the weather in Shropshire has been nowhere near as bad as in other parts of the country and my thoughts are with other farmers.
On a positive note, calving is well under way with three sets of twins in the first 25 cows calved, but just to put a spanner in the works we had a case of Schmallenberg, which is a little daunting as we have 150 more cows left to calve.
The only upside to this recent weather was an appearance on local news. The biggest question came from my son’s four-year-old friend who asked how on earth I managed to get inside his TV. I asked myself the very same question!
James Evans farms 300 Stabiliser suckler cows and 1,110 Llen cross ewes across two units, totalling 825ha, in Shropshire. He was 2012 Farmers Weekly Beef Farmer of the Year.
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