I’ve just sent some yearling cattle to a Store Sale in Hailsham market which means they will be bought to grow all summer and then be fattened ready for the autumn Prime Sales where butchers go to purchase cattle that are ready to eat for Christmas.  They fetched a good price, but it must be said it gets ever harder to keep livestock and they need to sell well if the farmer is to have any chance of making a profit.
The first issue is the lack of rain.  Having rained almost every day during the winter, there’s been hardly a drop since the beginning of March, and April was one of the driest on record. In a normal spring, we turn the cows and calves out in early May onto lush pasture. Milk flows, calves fatten and the grass grows faster than they can eat it, not this year. And of course the lack of rain will also impact on the price of hay. For years we have bought in 4ft round bales for around £20 a bale but last year it was in such short supply that over the winter these were trading at up to £100 a bale. And that was before all the fertiliser that would have been put on these fields to increase yields got stuck the wrong side of the Straits of Hormuz!
But here in the South East we’re also suffering another consequence of climate change, Blue Tongue. 

This is a disease caught by all ruminants – cattle, sheep, goats and deer – when they get bitten by infected midges. Blue Tongue has been known in Africa for over a hundred years and as Europe has warmed up the midges – and the virus they carry  have moved slowly north.

Here in the South East we’re also suffering another consequence of climate change. Blue Tongue has been known in Africa for over a hundred years and as Europe has warmed up the midges – and the virus they carry – have moved slowly north.

Last year the inevitable happened and they got blown across the channel. While it can kill sheep, it is rarely fatal in cattle but can impact fertility.

Bulls that get infected can be infertile, and as suckler herds (that is the name for beef cattle as opposed to dairy herds) get turned out all summer to more or less get on with the business of making more cows, it can often be a few weeks before a farmer will realise that too many cows are not “holding to service” –i.e. getting pregnant – which messes with the farming calendar. It can also cause late abortions which means if you scan all your cows in say August and they are all in calf, come the spring when you are expecting lots of new arrivals some of them may indeed prove empty.  
So you can begin to understand why more and more farmers are giving up on livestock. The recent figure from Defra shows the UK beef herd was down by 3%, the tenth year of decline, and the female breeding flock for sheep was down by 2%. 

But it’s not all doom and gloom. June sees the start of the Summer Agricultural Show season and there has been lots of behind-the-scenes prep to get team Coopers ready. Some have had a more positive attitude to being halter trained than others (I’m not sure we’ll get Richard the young bull in the ring) but with the help of lovely – and importantly big and beefy – Lawrence, we’ve more or less got there and as Heathfield Show approaches we go forward in hope rather than expectation! Be lovely to see you there.