A hard day.......

In the morning, I woke early.  I hadn't really slept properly, I could have just fallen unconscious at some point in the night due to drink, I don't really know.  I do know that no matter how hard I tried, I didn't really get drunk the night before; but I drank.

In silence, on my own.

I met Nigel at the farm.  He'd collected the gear we needed before leaving Exeter the night before.  With a heavy heart, we both suited and booted and set off down the farm track.

Bill was waiting for us.  He'd separated off a few more cows that were showing signs of FMD when he milked the cows, and we sorted out his valuation.

A 'Merlo' telehandler came rumbling down the track to the farm, and the driver climbed down from his cab.

"We're all ready up there."

We sent him back, with instructions to block off the farm lane with the telehandler, and position all his men across the field in case the worst happened.

The three of us then waited for the phone call to confirm that our instructions had been carried out.  It was a hellish wait.

The phone rang, and Nigel turned to Bill and asked him if he wanted to have a minute with the cows before we let them out.

"I've said my goodbyes" he said, with a tear in his eye.

The gate was opened, and we let the cows out.  After months of being shut into sheds, they thought it was spring turnout and skipped off down the lane.

Looking back now, I'm crying as I write this.  At the time, there was no time for tears, and almost robotically, we knew what we had to do and just got on with it.

Nigel and I set off after the cows and left Bill with the cows we'd killed the day before, and a couple more that had been separated that morning.

It all went smoothly, and by the time Nigel and I caught up with the cows the men who were building the pyre and disinfecting the farm next door had got them into a big barn.

There was a portacabin on the farm for the contractors to use for their meals.  Nigel and I carried all the gear into there to sort it out.

On arrival, we met our allocated slaughterman for the job.  He was a big man, who wore a baseball cap and didn't talk much (I later learnt that he was as deaf as a post).  He introduced himself as Tony (again, not his real name), and we went through the procedure.

There was only one problem.  Tony had turned up wearing a white paper suit.  Nigel and I were of the opinion that the blue suits (which had only been got in because there was a shortage of white ones), were less likely to 'spook' cattle, so we asked him to change.  He didn't argue.

A cattle crush had been found, and using a couple of gates, the contractors had set up a race along the front of the shed where the cows stood patiently waiting.

I filled a needle with 5ml of 'Rompun', which is a sedative, and the contractors pushed the first cow into the crush.  Nigel swiftly and skillfully injected the cow, and she was let out and pushed into the smaller shed next door.  I had the next needle filled ready and the contractors pushed the next cow through.  This went on for all of the cows, and the whole process was trouble free.

Once the cows had all been injected, I went into the next shed where Tony was busy at his gruesome task.  

The sight that greeted me in the next shed was strange.  Cows lay about all over the place.  Not dead, but sleeping.  In fact, most of them were snoring.

Without any fuss or visible emotion, Tony went up to each cow in turn and stunned it with the captive bolt pistol.  For those who don't know, a modern captive bolt pistol has a retracting bolt that enters the front part of the brain of the animal, and knocks it out.  Effectively, it's in a coma.  You then have to kill it.  

To kill an animal that has been stunned with a captive bolt pistol you either 'stick it', (which lets all it's blood pump out), or you 'pith' it.

To pith a cow, you push a rod which is about two and a half feet long into the hole made by the bolt, and push it up and down to break up the brain stem.  When you do this to a stunned cow, it's nerves make it kick and writhe around.  If you're not careful you can be very badly hurt by flailing legs.

I watched Tony at work for a few minutes, and then climbed over cows to get to him.

"Can I help?" I asked.

"What?"

"CAN I HELP?" I shouted back.

"Do you know how to pith?"

"Yes, where are the canes?"

"Canes?  This is it mate.  They only sent us one."

One pith cane for all these cows.  It was mad.  When you pith, you end up with blood, brain and spinal chord all over the cane.  They are designed for single use so that you don't end up with all that shite on you.  It was a BSE precaution.

We worked our way through the sleeping cows one by one.  Tony stunned, I pithed.  I got thrown all over the place, but we pushed on.

While we did that, Nigel was supervising the delivery of 200 hoggets from next door.  They went into the shed were the cows had been put, and were separated into groups of 50 or so.

Sheep were not doped first.  You just got in amongst them and shot them.

"Can you use a gun?" Tony asked.

"Yes."

"Good.  There's a spare in my bucket."

We both got in, and got on with it.  It didn't take long.

Afterwards, Tony and I went down with the Merlo driver to pick up the five dead cows from the day before, and shoot the ones that Bill had separated off at morning milking.

Back at the portacabin, Nigel had been busy on the phone.

"They've brought in something called 'contiguous culling'.  We've got to kill any farm that has a boundary with the infected premises."

Nigel and I walked down to the farm to see Bill, and discussed along the way the full implications of a contiguous cull.

When we arrived at the farm, we were offered a cup of tea, and gratefully accepted it.  We walked in, and the young boy (who was about 6) asked Nigel;

"Have you killed all our cows?"

"Yes............ I'm afraid so" said Nigel.

"That's OK" the boy said.  "I've killed all mine too".

We both looked down at the lads 'Britains' farm yard, and saw that he'd laid all the little toy cows on their sides.



I couldn't stay inside.  I turned around and walked out to cry my eyes out in the farmyard.

When we'd finished that day Nigel decided that he would leave his car there and ride back with me.  I drove ten miles in silence, and suddenly realised that Nigel was fast asleep in the passenger seat.

We were both knackered.

Added at a later date;

Here is a link to some pictures of what we did.  Please note, this was not my team working, but it was very similar to the way we worked:


http://www.devon.gov.uk/fmdramscliffe1.pdf


Readers who are sensitive to animal slaughter should not click this link!