Foot n mouth, 20 years ago today.

[Greythundercloudys]

Think it the anniversary today, where does the time go.

 

[Bald Rick]

Had a group of Bangor University students on a farm visit that day.
At "Any further questions" at the end of the visit, one asked me what I thought of FMD being found in Essex.
Dismissed it as irrelevant to my business ............ 3 days later under a D notice.

Carpe Diem

 

[Greythundercloudys]

Remember hearing stories of farms in the North of England getn there yard concreted, etc, etc, payed for buy the government, also that lorry company snowie who were based in Stirling made some money, still spending it 20 years later.

 

[bobk]

Remember it too well , bought 10 heifers out of Uttoxeter , stopped the sale half way through , how we didn't get it or being contiguous I'll never know

 

[Greythundercloudys]

Think l remember was later in the year, taking lmbs to abp Bathgate, took hrs to unload them and wash trailor out, even get there at 5 in the morning. The vet was very strict. And got rubbish prices as well.

 

[ollie989898]

Was just before I started college. Fudged the industry good and proper.

Sad times.

 

[deere 6600]

Think l remember was later in the year, taking lmbs to abp Bathgate, took hrs to unload them and wash trailor out, even get there at 5 in the morning. The vet was very strict. And got rubbish prices as well.

I remember the Bathgate abbatoir as well 29 quid for the lambs

 

[Greythundercloudys]

Correct, now good ones are making 129, only taken 20 years. To be a good trade.

 

[bobk]

I remember the Bathgate abbatoir as well 29 quid for the lambs

Yes we got royally shafted without live markets

 

[JWL]

Pretty damned sombre memories of the months that followed, I had not long moved from a job as shepherd with 1300 ewes to a life away from stockwork employed as spray operator on a large spud farm near Hereford. The stockman inside you does not disappear, I will never forget the stench and the glow at night from the pyres

 

[Breckland Boy]

It was the beginning of the end for our early lambers and big sheep numbers for us.
We were upto 3000 ewes and finishing 2000 store lambs on top.
Although we didn't get f&m we were under a d notice so couldn't move any stock.
It was a terrible time and my mother never really got over the stress and it took nearly 10 years to get the business back on track.

 

[Willie adie]

I worked for FC then and certain things convinced us that the government knew weeks before the initial outbreak

 

[Johnnyboxer]

Sad time all round

Dire for livestock farmers

Altered how we did business for 12 months

Couldn’t see it

Couldn’t taste it

Couldn’t smell it

Couldn’t feel it

Bit like Covid

Disinfect all the time

 

[Hampton]

My wife was a student at Newc Uni and got a job for defra doing F&m admin. She said it was awful. The computer system couldn’t update quick enough, so she would be ringing up farmers to tell them they had a outbreak, to have grown men burst into tears and tell her that the animals had been shot and burnt the day before.
Terrible times, and it was in the days before mental health became a thing. No support for farmers or ministry

 

[jendan]

Sad time all round

Dire for livestock farmers

Altered how we did business for 12 months

Couldn’t see it

Couldn’t taste it

Couldn’t smell it

Couldn’t feel it

Bit like Covid

Disinfect all the time

Very much like Covid.Came out of a lab as well.

 

[jendan]

I worked for FC then and certain things convinced us that the government knew weeks before the initial outbreak

Thats because they did know!

 

[kill]

Never forget looking up to the crest of the hill infront of our place and watching the neighbours sheep being walked up across that ground to be dispatched along side their dairy cows by people in those dreadful white suits we all remember for those reasons and then stench of the lite pyre a few days later that due to heavy driving rain pushed the smoke straight through our yard and livestock buildings for the next day.
How we never lost our stock I will never know but several adjoining neighbours were also taken out. But I have think we may well have been the losers financially as stock was worth so little that year where as payments were 3-4 times greater in some cases for stock taken than achievable later that year .
I also remember well going up onto Exmoor for a drive when things eased and seeing smoke rising from dozens of pyres across Devon from Holsworthy area to almost Somerset .
I just hope in my lifetime I never see anything like it again.

 

[suffolksmallholder]

Best year for squirrel control ever.
Those who've been planting trees in the recent past are just discovering the problem of trying to get young stock to survive more than a decade without being destroyed!
SS

 

[JP1]

Remember hearing stories of farms in the North of England getn there yard concreted, etc, etc, payed for buy the government, also that lorry company snowie who were based in Stirling made some money, still spending it 20 years later.

I focus on the hefted flocks that money cannot replace

The farmers who took their lives and the ones that were found before they did it and were doubly ashamed

The generations of dam lines that were often laid waste and on contiguous rings etc

The farmers and their wives working long and traumatic days alongside the slaughter and pithing teams, being left with nothing, absolutely nothing and the next day still smelling the burning pyres and being forced to stay on farm and do their own sanitation

No amount of alleged compo or conspiracy theories can reverse any of that or the mental scars that come with it

Friends and wonderful stock people who , a bit akin to survivors never mentioning wartime experiences, remain stoic but I can see at a 100 paces the lasting effect of all of that

 

[upnortheast]

Bloody hell, don`t want to go through that again. Didn`t get it but it got within 2 miles.
Just a few months ago a lad was saying when he hears a JCB reversing beeper in the distance it takes him back to F & M times. If you heard that you knew someone was having one of the worst days of their lives.