The work continues....

We carried on with the daily drudge of going to farms and killing everything.

It sounds like a cliche, but when you'd finished killing everything, there was an eerie silence on the farms; even the birds stopped singing.

Farms aren't quiet places.  Animals always make noise of some sort, often just contented sounds, but always some noise.  Once we'd killed everything, all you wanted to do was get washed down and away to the next.

We worked long hours, and didn't sleep much.  Some days we would start at 5 or 6 in the morning, and not get back to the hotel until 10 or 11 at night.

One night, I'd just sat down for my warmed up dinner at about 10pm when the phone rang.  It was Nigel;

"We've got an urgent job to do.  It's a new infected premises, and they want us to make a start on it straight away"

"You're joking."

"No.  I'll ring the drovers, you get hold of Tony.  I'll meet you there."

I continued to eat while I phoned Tony and arranged to pick him up.

By this stage of the crisis, we'd started to stockpile stores.  In the van I had plenty of drugs, syringes, needles and ammunition.  I'd also stopped handing in guns for service and Tony and I serviced them ourselves.  I had four guns on board, one for Tony, one for me, and a spare each.

We drove off to the new IP.  On arrival, we got out of the van and started to get ready.  The now familiar TV crew and newspaper journalists were waiting for us and making offers for our 'story'.  They got the usual response from me ("I'm busy, piss off.") and the usual from Tony ("How much?").  It always amazed us that the media seemed to know where the infected premises were before we did.  Exeter leaked like a sieve.

Nigel was already on farm, and we sent the two drovers on to sort out the plan while Tony and I loaded the kit into our now familiar yellow builders buckets.

We set off up the lane, and about halfway up a figure came out of the dark to stop us.

"Is it true?" the man asked

"Is what true?" I replied

"Have they got 'it' next door?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"So you'll be killing all my stock as well?" he asked

"Not tonight.  We'll be back to sort it out tommorow."

The man took on a concerned look.

"The thing is, we've got a pig.  It's only a pet, but I understand that they are the worst thing going for foot and mouth.  If it's going to make things worse around here, then I'll shoot it myself tonight"

"What sort of pig is it?"

"It's a kune kune" he said.

"Look, " I said, "a few hours aren't going to make much difference.  We are coming back first thing in the morning, so providing it's not showing any signs of disease, we'll deal with it then.  You'll need to have it valued; do you have a favoured valuer?"

"Yes, we use 'Bucks' for everything."

"OK, leave it with me.  We'll bring a valuer with us in the morning."

The valuers were staying with us in the hotel, and I had their numbers in my phone.  I rang them as we walked away and arranged for them to come out at 6am.

In some ways, we shouldn't have left the pig that night.  I didn't have the right gun to shoot it (a pig like that needs a 'free bullet'), and I didn't want the farmer doing a botch job himself.  I'd pick up the correct gun in the morning.

Tony and I walked into the farm and got an update from the drovers.  There was a large dairy herd, and some followers.  Some dairy cows were showing symptoms, so they were the priority.

We ran the cows through the parlour for their sedation, and they were then put into an empty silage clamp.  Tony started work almost straight away, and it wasn't long before I joined him.

We got all the cattle killed that night, and arranged to meet on farm at 6am to kill the couple of hundred sheep and start work on the contiguous farm next door.

At 2.30am, I fell into bed for a couple of hours sleep before the next marathon day.

Newton Tracey - Part One

We were sent to a farm in the small hamlet of Newton Tracey.  There was a number of beef cattle, and lots of sheep.  The sheep were lambing, and most of them were in a big shed.

The drovers had arrived on farm before us, and got organised to do the cattle first.  When Tony and I arrived with Nigel in hot pursuit we were greeted at the gate by the usual police panda car and hire car containing two members of the RMP.  Unusually for the RMP's, they got out of their car to greet us.

I explained who we were, and what we were going to do, and left them with a single instruction;

"Until we have finished, no-one is to come onto this farm, especially in white suits."

I thought I'd explained myself clearly, and we moved off down a sloped concrete track to the farm buildings.

There was a large empty silage clamp which we were going to use to kill the cattle, which were mostly in covered yards.  The drovers had done their usual good job of setting everything up ready; an improvised race made from gates, a crush, and some more gates to allow the cattle to get into the silage clamp once they'd been sedated.

Everything went off smoothly to start with.  The cattle were put through the crush by one drover, injected by Nigel, and then let through into the silage clamp by the other drover.  Tony worked alone in the silage clamp stunning and pithing the cattle once they'd gone to sleep.

Mac was pushing the cattle into the crush, and warned Nigel and I that there was one 'lively' animal amongst them; the animal in question still had one testicle due to an error when it was castrated.  That 'one ball' made him a bit more of a handful, and we all kept an eye on him.

It was nearly the turn of the 'rogue' animal to go into the crush, and Mac was maneuvering him towards the race, when suddenly, with no warning, two people in white suits came wandering down the concrete slope towards us.

All hell broke loose, as the animal panicked, and lept over the gates forming the race.  Finding himself back in a covered yard, but alone, he ran up and down the concrete slipping over several times.  

The team, with our usual efficiency, raced into action.  Mac shouted to let the others out, and Nigel and I started to untie the gates to allow all the cattle back into the covered yard with the now mad rogue bullock.  As we let the others through, the 'one ball' threw himself over the feed barrier that went down the middle of the covered yard, and I had a feeling of doom about it all.

"Lets give them all ten minutes to calm down, and then try and do him first" Mac sensibly suggested.

While all this was going on, the two 'white suits', both bearing clipboards, had continued to walk towards us, oblivious to the chaos they had caused.

Furious, I turned and let rip;

"Who the f*cking hell are you two idiots?" I bawled.

Identification was proffered, and ignored, and they explained that they were from Page Street (MAFF HQ in London), and had come down to assess health and safety during slaughter.

"Well we are all healthy, and everything was safe until you idiots came wandering onto the farm without permission.  Do you have any idea how dangerous that was for us all?"

They obviously didn't, but the message was sinking in.  

"Come with me" I said, as I marched past them towards the farm gate.

The two RMP soldiers on the gate had a similar, and possibly more graphic bollocking, and I offered to provide the two clipboards a blue suit on condition that they didn't come back onto the farm until we'd finished the cattle.

I walked back down to the farm buildings, and left the two Londoners at the gate, busily talking to people on mobile phones.  I imagined that they were complaining about me, but was past caring.

Back to the cattle, who by now were looking calm, we decided that we needed to get the rogue bullock out of the way so that he didn't wind the others up too much.  The whole team climbed in, and we planned to get him into the crush, give him the sedative, and then wait for it to start to take effect before letting him into the silage clamp.

It was all looking like it was going to work, but suddenly, he decided not to play.  He flattened part of our temporary race and then charged across the covered yard straight towards the feed barrier.  Having previously jumped the feed barrier, we all expected him to do the same, but this time he just put his head down and tried to charge straight through it.

Stunned, and stuck, the animal had jammed his head between the bars of the feeder.  Like lightening, Tony and I both grabbed a gun and headed towards him.  Tony got there first, and leaped over the barrier to face the animal head on.  He quickly loaded his gun and shot the animal.  The whole thing probably took twenty seconds, but my heart was in my throat.

We all took a minute or five to calm down, and then sorted out the rest of the cattle without event.

The farmer, unaware of our difficulties, appeared with a cup of tea for us all.  It was very welcome, and we spent a few minutes explaining the full implications of being on 'form A' restriction.  We could license him off the farm to go shopping or whatever, but not until slaughter and initial disinfection was completed.

"Fish and Chips" he said.

"What?"

"I was going to get you all some fish and chips."

"That's ok," I said, "if you need anything like that today, we'll send the army.  It's about time they did something useful".

The farmer wanted a few bits and pieces, and had set his heart on getting us all some food, so I went and asked the two soldiers to pop into town for him.

"We're under orders not to leave the farm until slaughter is completed" was the reply.

Annoyed, I walked back down to the farm buildings.

"Don't worry," I told the farmer, "I'll send one of our lads as soon as we've finished."

"I know," the farmer said, "I'll get a neighbour to go in for me and leave it all at the gate".

I felt guilty.  It was bad enough that he was insisting on feeding us all, the least we could do was to get his shopping for him.

We moved into a large dutch barn that had been set up as a lambing shed.  As usual, the drovers had penned up the sheep and started to seperate the lambs.  The noise was intense.

Tony and I got on with the grim task in hand, and soon got the job finished.  By now it was dark, and we knew that there was no way we could kill some of the older lambs that had been put out to grass with their mothers.  There was also the usual hurdle problem, so we instructed the army to organise hurdles for the following day, and made our way to the farmhouse.

After washing off the worst of the blood and filth of the day, we sat down at the farmhouse table for fish and chips out of the paper.  It was a welcome bite after a long day, and the farmer and I reminissed about my childhood times in the area.  He'd known me since I was four or five years old, and I felt terrible about what he was now going through.  He told me that day that he was 'getting out', and he did.

About five years later, I joined some family and friends for a meal in a pub very near that farm.  It was after the smoking ban, because when I went outside for a cigarrette, a familiar voice spoke to me.......

"Do you remember those fish and chips?"

An offer of cash

One day we had some small parcels of sheep to kill.

Two lots were on either side of a fairly busy road into South Molton.  There was a large lay by on one side of the road, and sheep hurdles had been left ready for us by the army.

Hurdles were essential when you were doing jobs like this.  They allowed you to build pens in which to herd the animals and then kill them.  Once the stock was dead, we would spray them with disinfectant, and the hurdles would be pressure washed off and taken to the next job by an army team.

It was a small thing that the army got right.  The only hitch was that sometimes, despite the fact that we were told that the hurdles were on the job waiting for us, we would arrive and find nothing.  Some clever thieves had bought themselves army fatigues from a surplus store, and were following the soldiers around picking up the hurdles for re-sale or scrap.  If challenged by a farmer, or anyone else, they just claimed to be from the army, and got away with it.  They had hundreds of sheep hurdles, and quite a few pressure washers using this method.

Anyway, to our relief, we found our hurdles waiting for us.

The sheep were penned up by the drovers, and while we killed the first lot on one side of the road, the drovers organised the next lot on the opposite side.

As we had to move from one batch of stock to another, and cross a road, Tony and I disinfected and changed outer overalls in the lay by.  Rarely for us, we were wearing white suits that day; our precious blue suits were in short supply, and the sheep didn't seem to 'spook' like cattle when they saw someone in white.

We stripped off our white suits, and were just putting them into a black sack to be left with the dead sheep when a car skidded past us and then reversed alongside us and the passenger window was lowered.

"What are you doing with them?" the driver asked.

"What do you mean?" I replied.

"Those white suits, what happens to them now?"

Thinking that this was someone who was anxious about Bio Security, I started to explain the procedure to the driver.

"I'll have them" the driver said, as he produced a wedge of banknotes.

"No you f*cking won't!" Tony said.  "Unless you want to end up under that lot, you'd better do one!"

The driver took the hint, and sped off.  Tony and I exchanged disapproving glances, put our clean suits on, and walked across the road.

"What did he want?" Mac asked.

"Don't ask."

To this day, I don't know who the man was.  He could have been a farmer wanting to get rid of his stock; he could have been a journalist testing us out; or it could have just been a chancer.  Whoever he was, it changed the way we did things.  From then on, we hid our bag of dirty suits amongst the dead animals, just in case.

Weeks later, I drove past that same spot, and those sheep were still stacked up on the side of the road.  They became a macabre local landmark for passing traffic.

Self Service and a visitor

After the debacle with the guns, Tony and I decided that the only way we could make sure that we had decent guns was to service them ourselves.  We took a load of spare parts from the stores, and agreed that we would service our own guns each evening.  We also drew another Cash Special, which gave us a total of four guns; one each, and a spare each.

Contiguous culling continued, and we also did most of the infected premises.  By this time, team 13 were considered mavericks at Exeter; good at what we did, but not good at sticking to the rules.  We did our own thing, and no-one had the balls to stop us because we always produced the goods.

We didn't break the important rules.  Bio security was never an issue with us, nor was the way we dealt with farmers or animals.  What the civil servants at Exeter didn't like was the way we behaved around the office.  We helped ourselves to stores, jumped queues, parked as close to the door as we could, and failed to show respect to the senior civil servants who stalked the corridors at Exeter.

One afternoon we returned to the office early.  As we piled into the back door at Exeter, a large man barred our route and demanded identification.  Affronted by the nerve of this impostor, we all pulled out our ID badges and looked at him with disdain.

Our first stop was the stores.  We didn't know what jobs we would be doing, but needed to top the van up with various bits and pieces.  To the annoyance of the storeman, we grabbed what we needed, locust style, and piled it all up by the door ready for our exit.

The drovers started to load the gear into the van, and Nigel and I headed off down the corridor.  Suddenly, we saw some of the senior managers heading our way, and stood to one side to let them pass.  Amongst the throng of sycophants, was none other than the prime minister.  As he walked passed people he was introduced to them and shook hands.  It was a pleasure to see the look of fear on the face of the boss as she realised that Nigel and I had joined the line of people to meet the great man.  We stood there, and waited.  He came to us, and was given a very brief introduction.  Nigel shook hands with him, and I put my hands firmly into my pockets and shook my head at him.

"It's a tough job you are doing" he said as he hurried passed me.

I went for a pee, and then met the team in the mess room.  As I walked in, I saw them all giggling while Nigel told them what I'd done.

"Well, the blokes an idiot" I said.  "Who's turn is it to get the tea?"

That was it.  The PM visited, and was welcomed by everyone except me.  I didn't like him, and didn't like what was happening.

Anyway, he wasn't important.  What was important was stopping Foot and Mouth.

Needing a rest

Life, strange as it was, carried on.

Sooner or later, we all 'cracked'.  I was the first in the team to 'wobble'.

We'd been sent to an infected premises near South Molton.  The premises themselves had been slaughtered a week previously, and the dead animals lay everywhere.

We had to kill some contiguous sheep.  I can't remember how many, but it was lots.

There was a police car sat on the gate, with two RMP officers sat alongside doing nothing as usual.  The sheep to be killed were all in fields joining the farm, and were quickly brought onto the holding.

There was some free space in the sheds, so we started to kill the sheep in small batches as usual.  Fairly early on, one of our guns went wrong.  We always carried three guns, one each for Tony and I, and a spare.  

Our weapon of choice was the 'Cash Special' captive bolt pistol.  It was a well made tool, which usually worked very well.  The problem was that the guns themselves were not designed for the kind of continual punishment we gave them.

In an abattoir, the captive bolt is used maybe a few hundred times a day.  An animal is stunned, then shackled, then 'stuck'.  All this takes a few minutes, and the gun has time for a rest between shots.

With us, especially when killing sheep, it was continuously being fired.  They soon got hot, and after a long day your forearms ached from holding such a heavy tool.

Our 'spare' gun that day was a variation on the Cash Special.  It was a shorter, lighter version, and felt totally different to the usual weapon we used.

We soon filled every available space in the shed, and looked around to see how we could fit in the rest of the sheep.  There were no hurdles, and no empty buildings.  The decision was taken to run live sheep onto the dead bodies already in the shed, and 'layer' the animals.  

I wasn't happy with this, but like the others, couldn't see any other way of doing the job.

We carried on, with Tony and I stood on top of sheep that had been dead for a week and killed the next 'layer'.

It was foul.

The space soon ran out again, and we started on layer three of sheep.  By now, the smell, and general unpleasantness of it all was really grinding me down.  Tony had passed the 'short' Cash over to me, as he didn't like it.  I didn't like it either, and our killing rate was falling fast; partly because I was taking much longer to place each shot, and partly because we were standing on top of the sheep we had killed a couple of hours earlier.

Suddenly, my gun started to miss-fire.  It did it a couple of times, and I cracked.

I just couldn't cope with it all anymore.

Tony asked what was wrong,

"This f*cking pile of crap gun has packed up now!" I said as I threw the gun across the shed.  It bounced off the wall, and I stood and stared at it.

After a minute or two of blank staring at the faulty gun lying on the ground I walked over and picked it up.  Without another word to anyone, I walked out of the shed and into the bright sunshine of outside.  I took a few breaths of fresh air, and stood and cried.

I knew at that point that I really needed to get away from this farm.  I walked to the gate, and opened the van.  The gun was thrown into the back, and I started to wash myself down with disinfectant.  Once disinfected, I stood leaning on a nearby gate and smoked a cigarette.

Before I'd finished my smoke, Nigel walked up to me.  He put a hand on my shoulder and said, 

"You need a break.  Go home, and take a rest day."

After weeks of working anything up to 130 hours, the Ministry had realised that you can't push people that hard without something going wrong.  We had been allowed a rest day, taken as 'special leave' after each eight days work.  No-one in the team up to that point had ever used a rest day.

"What about this lot?" I asked

"Don't worry about it.  I'll look after things, and we'll all still be here when you get back" he said.

I was exhausted.  Officially, I was supposed to drive back to Truro, pick up my own vehicle, and then drive home.  That was a round trip of 180 miles, and I just couldn't face it.  The other complication was the hotel.  I had all my stuff in my hotel room 30 miles away.

I phoned the hotel and explained that I wasn't going to be there that night.  

"That's OK," the receptionist said, "If we need your room we'll pack your stuff up and keep it safe for you.

Home was 8 miles away, so I got in the van and drove there.

Home life, such as it was, was very strange after all that time away.  I couldn't go out and do the normal things, and it seemed very odd watching the news from the relative comfort of my own armchair.

I had my rest day, and slept and eat far more than I had been doing.  But I wanted to be back with the team, doing the job, fighting the war.

Why, after all the suffering did I want to go back and do it?  Looking back now, I really don't know, but at the time, I felt that I'd let people down, and worried about what was happening in my absence.

I only had the one rest day.  Two nights at home, and first thing in the morning I was at Exeter for the morning briefing.  The team welcomed me back like I'd been off for a year, and I was glad to feel wanted.

Plodding on....

The relentless killing continued.

One morning, we were handed a slaughter sheet for one of Nigels former clients.

"This one might be difficult.  He's coniguous, and is refusing to let us kill."

"He's one of my clients" Nigel informed them.

"We know, that's why you've got it."

We decided to get the team to wait off farm while Nigel and I went on to talk to the farmer.  

He was a batchelor, who lived alone on the farm with his elderly mother.  After a tense phone call, he agreed to talk to Nigel.  His main objection was that the animals would be left on the farm and upset his mother.  Nigel offered to try and pull some strings to get the bodies removed quickly.

Exeter were contacted, and informed of the situation.  They agreed to have transport waiting while we killed so that the stock could be moved as soon as we were finished.

Reluctantly, the farmer agreed.  He made it clear that he was only agreeing because he trusted Nigel.

We went on farm and carried out an uneventful slaughter.  It was a small dairy herd, with a few followers, and went off without a hitch.  As usual the team worked well together, and it didn't take long.

As we were finishing, Nigel took a call from the office.  They wouldn't be able to move the animals that day after all.  It seemed that the army were relying on transport resources that they didn't actually have.

After receiving assurances from the transport co-ordinator that the dead animals would be removed the following day, we broke the news to the farmer.

Another phone call, and we were sent about 15 miles away to another awkward job.  The report was that the farmer had threatened to kill anyone from the ministry that tried to get onto his farm.  He wasn't happy because he didn't agree that he was contiguous.

Great.

We sat down with the team and discussed the best way of dealing with the situation.  Suddenly, Mac noticed the name of the farm on the notebook in front of us.

"I know him....."

"Do you?  Is he likely to get nasty?"

"Um, yes.  He's a big bloke with a bigger temper."

We all sat in silence, wondering what to do for the best.

"Let me go and see him first" Mac said.  "I don't think he'll kick off with me"

I looked at Mac, a huge man, and agreed.  It would be a brave man you tackled Mac.

He headed off, and we cleaned up and drove nearer the farm.  

Sat in a layby, my phone rang.

"It's me boss.  He's OK, but not happy.  You can come on farm, but tell everyone not to try and talk to him; he could fly off the handle at any minute."

We drove to the farm gate and got organised.

Mac had spent the time since his phone call walking around the farm with the farmer and explaining what was going to happen.  The dairy herd was out at grass, and all the youngstock were housed in loose boxes around the yard.

Mac stopped us going any further onto the farm.

"He wants to get the cows in himself.  I told him that the team would stay out of the way until he was ready."

"OK Mac, we'll wait here quietly.  Give us the nod when he's ready."

The farmer and Mac went and got the cows.  They wanderered into the yard, looking a bit perplexed about what they thought was an early afternoon milking.

The farmer; of similar size to Mac, walked down through the holding yard and patted each cow individually, as he turned, I saw the tears rolling down his cheeks.  I looked away, holding back the tears myself, and none of the team could look at each other.

The farmer walked past us, with still not a word spoken to anyone in the team except Mac, and slammed the farmhouse door shut behind him.

After a pause, the team swung into action.  Mac went into the parlour with Nigel to sedate, and Tony and I waited for the cows to arrive in the barn we were going to kill them in.  

They arrived ten at a time, and we quickly and quietly got on with stunning and pithing each one.  The whole team were subdued, and hardly a word passed between us all.  We didn't need to talk, we all knew what to do.

The cows were all dead, and unusually for us, we decided to sedate the youngstock before slaughtering them.  There were quite a few young calves, the farm had been on form D restrictions for a while, and no stock had left the farm.

With everything dead, Tony and I took our usual last walk around.  Nigel and the Drovers waited for us, and we all set off for the vehicles.

As we walked past the farmhouse, a window was thrown open and we all heard a shout.

Nervously, I looked around to see the farmers head sticking out of the window.

"You'll all have something to eat before you go" he said.

We didn't have time to stop, but none of us felt strong enough to refuse.

In the farmhouse, we found a large table, weighed down with a spread of food that would have done any wedding breakfast proud.  The farmer and his wife had obviously spent the time that we were killing their herd preparing food for us.

We all picked at bits of food; not because we weren't hungry, but because it didn't feel right.  The whole time we were there, the farmer sat in a chair in the corner of the kitchen crying.

It was terrible.

We had done this, and we all felt bad.

Three weeks afterwards, Nigel had a phone call off the farmer who's stock was supposed to be collected the day after we had killed it.  He was distraught.  The animals were still there, and no-one had been in touch.

Phone calls were made, and we found out that the farm had been forgotten.  The civil servants blamed the army, and the army blamed the civil servants.

It was just another example of the shambles that was Exeter RSC at that time.

The Army arrive

To the relief of everyone working on FMD we heard that the army had been called into Devon following their success in Cumbria.

We were all optimistic that they would sort things out, and that we would no longer be waiting for stores, or sent to the wrong farms.

Our first experience of the army was not a good one.

We'd been sent to kill some sheep on what is known as 'off' land.  The sheep were not on the main holding, but in some fields away from the farm.  There were some buildings, but no farmer to help, and no sheep dog.

The sheep themselves were scattered across a number of fields, which were all connected by an old track.  Off this track there were seven separate gateways, and there were only five of us.

At the entrance to the land, a police panda car was parked up (as usual) and alongside it, in a hire car were two squaddies.  We said hello to them when we arrived, and they seemed friendly, although reluctant to get out of the car.

We spent quite a long time trying to get the sheep into the shed where they were going to be killed.  Our main problem was that there just wasn't enough of us to get block off the gateways, so the sheep would escape into the first open gate they came to.  We had no hurdles, and it was starting to annoy us all.

I asked one of the drovers to go and get the two squaddies to give us a hand.  After 10 minutes or so, he came back shaking his head,

"They won't do it."  he said.

"What the bloody hell do you mean?" 

"They are refusing point blank!" he said.

I marched off to the entrance and tapped on the window of the car,

"Lads, we really need a hand.  We just need you to come and stand in some open gateways for five minutes while we bring these sheep in"

"No chance mate." one of them said.  "We've been told that we don't have to set foot on the farms."

"Listen" I said, "no-one is asking you to get involved with the slaughter, we just need to bodies for five minutes"

"Well we aren't doing it."  he said.  "We've just got back from Kosovo, and have been told that we don't have to see any animals killed or anything."

"I'm not asking you to see any animals killed, I just want you to help get the sheep into the shed."

"Nope.  We're not moving."

"Right.  Can you tell me what the f*ck you are doing here then?"

"Our role is to provide 'logistical support' " he said.

"Well, we don't need any logistical support, so if all you are going to do is sit on your arses here, then you may as well go"

He wound up his window.

I stood back and looked at the two cars sitting there with occupants doing nothing.  I wasn't having it.

I tapped on the window again,

"I meant what I said.  If you aren't going to help at all, then get your backsides off the premises and go and report what has happened to whoever it is that you report to.  NOW! "

They took the hint.

By the time I had rejoined the team they had moved some gates from the shed, and blocked off the lane.  We got the sheep in and did the job.

The next day, we all decided to attend the morning briefing.  Everyone on the team was still unhappy about what had happened the day before, and the general feeling was that I should say something about it in the meeting.

After all the usual rubbish about how 'under control' things were, the question came;

"any questions?"

I stood up.

"Yes, we've got a question.  What is the role of the Royal Military Police here?"

The female Major of the RMP stood up.

"Perhaps I can answer that.  We are here to provide logistical support to the people on the ground."

It was the answer I expected.

"Can you tell us all what exactly 'logistical support' means please?  The reason I ask is that yesterday, we had two of your men sat on a farm gate alongside the police.  When they were asked to provide us with some support, they refused point blank to come onto the premises."

She started to look embarrassed.  I wasn't letting it go.

"You see, the thing is, we've all been working hard for weeks now, and struggling with the job.  We've all been looking forward to the army getting involved and helping us sort things out.  If all that you are going to do is to sit at farm gates while we work, then there doesn't seem much point in you being here."

She stood up, and with a tremble in her voice, repeated her earlier comment;

"As I said earlier, we are here to provide logistical support with stores, pressure washers etc.  It is true that my men have been told that they don't have to go onto farms unless they want to; they've just returned from a harrowing tour in Kosovo..."

I butted in and stopped her,

"I'm sorry, but that is just not good enough.  We draw our own stores, and if we needed a pressure washer we could draw that too.  I'm just not understanding what bloody use you lot are.  Is this just a press stunt to keep the media happy? Oh, and we are still on our 'harrowing tour'."

She couldn't answer, and walked out.

I may have been harsh with the RMP, but they were no use to us.  

Autumn Gate Farm

Not it's real name, obviously.....

On arrival at Exeter one morning we were handed a job sheet for a farm not too far from home for me.  The manager handed it over with a bit of a worried look on her face.

"It's a big one, I'm afraid.  Lots of sheep, and they're right in the middle of lambing."

"No problem.  We'll get straight up there."

"I've sent a couple of extra contract slaughtermen to help, and the IP vet is happy to help" she said.

I went to the stores and picked up the necessary.

On arrival on the farm we found a TV crew waiting for us.  They watched us wash down and filmed our entry onto the farm.  As we walked into the yard a worried looking young vet came dashing up.

"Who the hell are you lot" he asked aggressively.  

"We are the slaughter team" I said, and introduced him to everyone.

After a short 'discussion' about the merits of blue suits, the IP vet announced that he would 'help' with slaughter, and would be monitoring our work throughout the day.

I wasn't expecting that.

The way the new system worked was that when a slaughter team arrived on a holding, they took charge of everything.  In theory, the slaughter vet was in charge, but in practice, with our team it was me.  Once slaughter was complete, the slaughter vet handed control back over to the IP vet and we all buggered off to the next job.

This young vet was obviously deluded.

I explained to him that he was welcome to help with the slaughter, but that he was not to 'monitor' our work.  It was bad enough that the team had to work with the pressure of a TV crew nearby without some newly qualified vet breathing down our necks.

He stomped off, and I suspect phoned the office to check the facts.

There was a large shed, full of ewes and lambs, and on entry we found the two extra slaughtermen waiting for us.  Introductions were done quickly, and the drovers got to work.

The two extra slaughtermen had already penned up some sheep, and I let them get started on their own.

Ewes and lambs were separated into smaller groups using hurdles, and Tony and I started work.  We worked with one drover each, and the first job was to kill the lambs.

The drovers would pick up each lamb in turn and hold it with its head over the top of the hurdle.  We would then shoot it, and it would be dropped over the side outside the pen.  While re-loading, we would check each lamb to make sure it was dead.  The whole thing was quite quick, but very, very noisy.  If you stopped to think about what you were doing then you'd probably have to cry.

Once all the lambs from the pens were killed, the drover would get the next pen ready while Tony and I killed the ewes.  You didn't need much help to kill a pen full of ewes, you just walk amongst them and shoot them.  It becomes a robotic action; stand alongside your sheep, aim the gun (highest point of the head to the 'crook' of the neck), wait for the sheep to be standing still and shoot it.  They'd drop with a thump, and again, as you reloaded, you would be looking at the sheep to make sure it was dead.

Nigel returned from somewhere (checking paperwork or something) and as he had nothing else to do offered to 'drove' for me.  I sent my drover to work with the two contract slaughtermen, as they seemed to be making little progress.

We plodded on, and worked our way from pen to pen.  The noise was terrible, but that kind of drove you on really.  Once all the lambs from a pen had been killed you just wanted to get the ewes killed to shut them up.

I will repeat what I said in an earlier post now.  I worked with Tony throughout foot and mouth, and in all that time I never witnessed any animal needing a second shot from him.  We were good at what we did, and took pride in it.

An hour or so later my original drover walked up to me and tapped me on the shoulder.  

"You've got to do something about this guy; he's not doing it right."

I suggested to Nigel that he should go and check on the farmer (that was code for 'have a cup of tea and some cake), as he was looking knackered already.

I checked on Tony, "Everything OK?" he looked at me and then cocked his head towards one of the other slaughtermen.  Looking back at me he shook his head in a disapproving way.

I walked over and watched the man at work.  He was a tall, well built man, and didn't appear to have a hair on his head.  As I watched, I was struck immediately by the rough way he was handling the sheep.

I leant over the pen, and said in a firm voice:

"Steady....."

He looked at me straight in the eyes:

"WHAT?"

"I said, STEADY.  Either do the job properly, or f**k off the farm now."

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" he bellowed.

By this time, my two drovers and Tony had joined me in a little huddle.  I think they wanted to let him know that we were a team.

"I'm nobody in the big wide world" I said.  "But I am somebody here.  I'm going to say this once, and I won't be repeating myself.  You either do the job properly, or you go.  And when you've gone, I'll make it my personal mission to make sure that you never work for the ministry again.  Understand?"

He nodded and then scowled.

"Right, I said.  I think we'll all have a cup of tea and calm down before we do any more."

We sat down, and rolled cigarettes and swigged from coke bottles.  The two other slaughtermen both went outside.

"He's not much better," Tony said, nodding at the quieter slaughterman as he left.

"What do you mean?" I asked

"When the lads were setting things up he asked me where you shoot a sheep."

"WHAT?  You mean he really didn't know?"

"He told me that he hasn't done any slaughtering for thirty years, and has never used a captive bolt on sheep before."

"For f**ks sake.  Why the hell have they sent them here.  Right.  This is what we are going to do.  Tony, you work with 'Kojac', and I'll work with matey that doesn't know what he's doing.  Any nonsense off him then let me know."

"Right boss" the lads said, grinning.

I needed a breath of air, so went to the big barn door and peeked out.  From the safety of the barn, I could see the film crew and warned everyone to be on their guard.  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a pen full of lambs in the yard.

I walked over and in the pen was the IP vet, holding a lamb up by it's front legs as he injected it.  He had his back to me, so he jumped a bit when I spoke.

"What are you doing?" I asked quietly.

He turned around and I saw the tears rolling down his cheeks.  

"I'm doing what the bloody slaughter vet should be doing!" he said.  "Where the bloody hell is Nigel?"

"He's with the farmer.  Why don't you leave that and come and have a drink."

He looked down at a pile of lifeless lambs next to the pen.

"There isn't time.  We have to get all of these killed today. " 

For a second time he asked,

"Where is Nigel really.  He should be here helping me".

Right on cue, Nigel came wandering around the corner.  Before I had chance to say anything, the IP vet let rip;

"WHERE THE BLOODY HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?"

Nigel, looking surprised at being asked answered,

"I've been having a cup of tea with the farmer and his wife.  They've got some very nice cake in there; you should try it."

"CAKE?" the vet shouted.  

I asked Nigel to check on the lads, and he left me alone with the IP vet.

 

I put my hand on his shoulder, and felt his whole body convulse as he fought off his tears.

"I think you should stop doing that now.  Why don't you come inside with us, I could do with a bit of help."

Like a broken man he followed me into the shed.

I should explain here what the vet was doing outside.

The 'book' said that lambs that were less than a certain age (two weeks, I think) should not be shot, as their head and brain is not fully developed.  The 'book' way to kill them was to inject them with euthatal or whatever euthanasia drug was in use, straight into the heart.  

I've always been of the opinion that having a needle put into the heart must cause pain.  Nigel agreed, so we always shot the lambs regardless of the 'book'.  Shooting them did kill them outright, but they bled alot more than adults, and also kicked around a lot more.  The result was that it was quick, humane, but messy and not pretty to watch.

Our IP vet had read the 'book' and thought he was doing the right thing.  My opinion then, as it is now, was that what he was doing was slow, caused more distress to the lambs, and was not necessary.

I went back in and got on with the work with the others.

Mid afternoon came, and we stopped again.  There had been no more arguments, and the two vets had gone off together to talk to the farmer.  'Kojac' made an announcement:

"If you'll sign off my sheet I'll be off."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I've done my quota for the day.  I'm off."

"Well you'll have to wait for Nigel to come back.  He signs off the sheets."

On his return, Nigel spoke with the slaughterman who wanted to go.

"He wants me to sign to say he's killed 500" he said.

"Is that OK?"

"No it f**king isn't Nige.  Tell him he can have 250 and no more."

Another explanation is required here.  

Contract slaughtermen got paid on 'headage'.  The pay was £1 per sheep or goat, and £2.50 per cattle. 

A heated debate took place on the other side of the shed.  I anxiously watched as Tony wandered over and gave Kojac the benefit of his opinion.  I don't know what he said to him, but Kojac went away quietly.

We got back to work.  The other slaughterman was still working, and doing OK.  He was starting to look tired though.

We finally finished the shed off, and all breathed a sigh of relief that we'd finished.  It was 8pm.

The IP vet walked in with the farmer, announced that there were another 1000 sheep to be killed.

"Another thousand?" I said.

"Right.  We'd better make some space for them. "

We moved some dead sheep, and knocked up some more pens with the hurdles we had.  The sheep arrived.

By this time, we'd been working for about 14 hours, and everyone, without exception was tired.  There were still murmurings in the team about Kojac, and the fact that he'd gone early didn't help.  To his credit, the other contract slaughterman had stayed and worked well once he'd got into the swing of things.

We carried on, and despite the fact that we'd all had enough, we still functioned as a team.  By now, I had rejoined Tony in the pens, working alongside the old boy.  Mac whispered to me;

"You can't let him go on much longer.  You are killing eight sheep to his one.  He's had it."

Sure enough, when I looked over, the old boy looked as though he would keel over at any minute.  I was worried about his welfare, and the sheep.

"Take a break" I told him.

"What about....."

"Don't worry about that; we'll finish off here.  Go and get the disinfectant ready and have a drink."

He didn't argue.  I don't think he could.

Tony and I finished off, and took one last look at the scene of devastation in the shed.  There were 4300 dead sheep lying in the shed, and for the first time that day, it was silent.

I recently looked at the BBC website at the list of farms killed.  Even now, the list shows that site as only being 1600 sheep - which I can only presume was the quota allocation for that farm.  We killed more than double that number that day.

In an act of generosity for that old slaughterman, Tony shared the number of sheep excluding the 'kojac quota' straight down the middle. 

It was one of the hardest day's work I have ever done.

Team 13

Suddenly Exeter was starting to look more organised.

The control room was moved into a portacabin in the car park, and each day they would issue the patrol vets with a list of sites to visit, and the slaughter teams would collect their gruesome list.

Staff who by now had been away from home for more than a month, could drop off their dirty washing, and collect it the next day, neatly folded and ironed.  It was a small thing, but it helped.

As a team, we moved from job to job and killed stock morning, noon, and night.  It was a relentless task, but we did it well.  At no point was animal welfare compromised by us, and we always tried to treat the farmers with compassion.  Somehow, it was easier when you could walk away at the end of the slaughter, and leave the IP vet to sort out the mess.

Nigel, as the slaughter vet, carried out the 'vetrinary' work.  He signed the paperwork, injected the cattle, and oversaw the slaughter.  Jim and Mac as our 'drovers' moved the stock around, operated crushes, and assisted with the hard labour of it all.  Without our drovers, we would have been stuck.  They were both 'cattle men' and knew how to handle stock properly.

Tony, as contract slaughterman, did the killing.  As we'd come to expect, he was totally professional, and I don't remember him ever making any errors with the killing.

Me?  My job was a bit more vague.  I organised everything, and assisted Nigel with the administration of sedatives.  If there was no sedation to be done, I mucked in with Tony and acted as another slaughterman.

At a glance, anyone who knew us at the time would have known that we did not feature in any of those photos.  We refused to wear the white suits that became notorious as time went on.  Nigel and I were strongly of the opinion that white suits spooked cattle, and our opinion caused more than one argument with some of the Vets at Exeter.

There were also some differences in the actual way we carried out the slaughter.  Adult cattle and youngstock were sedated using 'Rompun'.  We were told to inject 2-3 ml of sedative; we gave most 5ml.  Dairy cows would be run through the milking parlour to get their injection; it was easier for them and us as they were used to going through there and remained much calmer.

Calves were not sedated.  There was no need.  We could walk amongst them and kill them without too much fuss, and we didn't want to move them around any more than was necessary.

Sheep were penned up in groups, and again, the two of us would get into the pen and drop them where they stood.  No fuss, no un-necessary handling, just quiet efficient slaughter.

The biggest problem at that time was the lack of logistics.  Pressure washers were like gold dust, and dead bodies stacked up on farms.  We also had difficulty with the basic requirements for slaughter.  Rompun was in short supply, as were pith canes, guns, ammunition and disinfectant.

When we were given our list of jobs, I would go to the stores and draw the kit.  If we had 300 sheep to kill, we were issued with 300 humane killer blanks.  Virkon was in such short supply that it started to come in plain buckets, and then just plastic bags.

The talk in the hotel at nights was mainly about the failure of Exeter to run the job properly.  There was a shortage of vehicles, diggers, lorries, pressure washers and lots of other basic stuff.  The general consensus of opinion was that the army should be brought in, with all their resources.

One morning I went to the stores to draw our gear for the day.

"Sorry, we haven't got any humane killer blanks left."

We had a list of 4 or 5 farms to do, and we were stuck.  I made a phone call to a gunsmith I knew to ask if he had any blanks in stock.  He did, and put them to one side for me.

That was the way it was then.  If you couldn't get what you needed, you either sat around waiting, or sorted it yourself.  

We were at war.  There wasn't time to wait around; at that stage we were still loosing.

A team is born......

On one of our regular visits to the Exeter morning meetings we were asked to stay behind.

There was a big problem in Devon.  The animals weren't being killed quickly enough.

I'll explain.

Foot and Mouth is a virus.  Once infected, animals produce 'virus' which spreads the disease.  The strain we had in Devon showed itself in cattle, and hid itself in sheep.  Pigs produced massive amounts of the virus and presented the biggest risk.

The cold, simple fact is that dead animals don't produce virus, and therefore can't spread the disease.  Once a farm is slaughtered, the only way the virus can  be passed on is via mechanical spread; i.e. on people or vehicles, or whatever.  The key fact is, dead animals don't create virus.

Therefore, it was vital that once found in a group of animals, they were killed as soon as possible.

Up until then, if a vet found Foot and Mouth, he or she became 'dirty'.  They stayed on the farm where they had found the disease, and oversaw the slaughter and disinfection of that holding.

Things were changing.

From now on, when a vet found FMD, he would report it as usual, and a 'Slaughter Team' would be sent in straight away to kill the stock.  The IP (infected premises) vet would then stay on farm to supervise the disinfection, and go 'clean' as soon as possible.

Slaughter Teams were to consist of a Slaughter Vet, Slaughter Charge-hand, Contract Slaughter man, and up to two 'Drovers' to assist.  They would basically be a 'flying squad' of killers.

I turned to Nigel,

"What do you reckon?"

"Well, it's not like we don't know how to do it.  Lets volunteer."

"OK, as long as we can have Tony..."

Nigels hand went up.  We were in.

As the first team to volunteer, I never really understood why we were named 'Team 13'.  "Unlucky for the cowboys" Nigel said.

I rang Tony and asked if he'd be prepared to work with us full time.  He was.

That left the problem of 'Drovers'. 

Up until then, we'd managed with the disinfection contractors at the one farm (that was really 5 or 6 farms) that we'd slaughtered.  Having to deal with new people wasn't something I was keen on.

"What about Drovers?" I asked Nigel.

"Stay there a minute" he said as he disappeared across the car park in hot pursuit of someone.

A few minutes passed, and Nigel came back with a huge man with hands like shovels.

"This is Jim.  He works for Genus, the AI people.  He'll work with us."

"Hello Jim.  Are you happy with this?"

"If Nigel says it's OK, then it's fine with me" he said.

"Good.  Got any mates here?  We need another man."

"Well, there is Mac, but he's on patrol."

"Give him a ring.  If he's up for it, I'll sort it."

Suddenly, we had a slaughter team.