Dairy cows on William Irvine’s farm. Picture: Cliff Donaldson
Armagh farmer Sean O’Hanlon sheds a light on the impact TB has on farm families, writes Tracey Donaghey.
In March of this year, bovine TB herd incidence in Northern Ireland (NI) reached a record high. Armagh farmer, Sean O’Hanlon, knows all too well about the devastation TB causes. A truth that cannot be articulated by figures or statistics. In 2018, he lost his dairy herd to TB despite taking all measures within his control to protect his livestock, changing the future of the family farm.
2018
Sean was milking his dairy herd twice a day, approximately 80-90 cattle.
“I did most of the work myself; cut my own silage, did my own slurry, my own fertilisers. I always felt there was not enough work for two but too much for one. All the family were pulled in, trying to get them to do as much as possible. Free of charge of course,” laughs Sean. “I was hoping to get to a stage where I would rare Friesian heifers and maybe sell some of them to help with the cash flow.”
It was after a TB test in mid-March 2018, that things took a turn for the worse.
“Before the four days were up, I started to notice lumps (on the cows) and I said to a family member that we could lose 15 or 20 cows, but I didn’t think there would be any more. The vet came out and started to check them. It was just good cow after good cow. There was more had TB than hadn’t.”
Breaking the news to the family added another dimension of heartbreak to the TB tragedy.
“The wee girl went down the barrier and said, ‘You get better, you get better’. Every time they (his children) saw a lorry out on the main road they said, ‘Are the cows coming back?’”
After the news was shared, reality started to kick in.
“Every stage was a different stage, having to wipe out the herd was the first hurdle to get over and valuating was a big day. Going on the lorry was terrible.”
Sean planned to be there when the cows left, but later changed his mind.
“My two brothers offered to do it so I said, ‘Why would I put myself through that?’ The house is quite close to the yard, you could hear the whole thing going on.
“The days of your life that you remember, your first child being born, getting married, your parents dying, but that was up there.”
Silence
The sound of a bustling farmyard is music to every farmer’s ear, silence in comparison is murderous.
“You go out to the yard and it’s just total silence. You would have always heard cows battering at the gate, calves roaring, a machine going.
“‘What am I going to do now?’ That’s going through your head. It was a very hard time not knowing what was going to happen or what I was going to do. A lot of family helped me, and neighbours were all very good.”
What next
After Sean’s herd left the yard and due to the toll it took on him, a couple of years passed before he decided he wasn’t going back into dairying. Living along a main road was part of the issue, but the fear of history repeating itself was much greater.
Sean is now a beef farmer and works off farm, but the worry of TB has not gone away. On the day of our chat, he has just been reopened after being closed with TB. Despite having excellent biosecurity and minimising contact with wildlife as much as possible, TB remains a problem.
“It is quite dominant in our area. I don’t know maybe it was wildlife, but all mine were home reared. The only thing I bought in was a Holstein bull. We’ve a closed herd. Never ever did I think TB would just come in and wipe me out.
“You get compensated for the cattle, but it just compensates you for the cattle. There are an awful lot of things that it doesn’t cover. Extra housing that you need for the calves, extra slurry accommodation and extra feeding.”
TB in NI
Sean’s father set up the family farm and he hoped to imitate his father’s success – TB had other ideas.
“Nothing has changed since my father was milking cows and there was TB testing. You look around at the changes that are made in farming, why are we still going through tests that didn’t work 30 years ago? I was wondering about the way animals are tested for BVD. Would blood testing be better?
“You could have a clear TB test this week and you could sell a cow in the factory and it would go down. Farmers can’t understand that. There is probably enough evidence to suggest that wildlife is involved in some of the problems, but I think we would really need to look into a better testing system because it’s not working.”
Cashflow is another major issue for farmers when closed by TB. Sean knows all too well about this from a dairy and beef prospective.
“I wasn’t selling cattle. I sold them about 20 – 24 months. I hadn’t any finished, I couldn’t put them into the factory. We’re TB testing every two months now because a neighbour was down.
“There are times I get letters about people and I would ring (DAERA) and say, ‘I don’t march them, there’s a road and a river between us’. They would say, ‘Badgers can cross the road; they can cross the river’. Maybe it’s not fair to say but there’s no help. They don’t come out; they have never assessed the situation with me.”
The set up of farm businesses in NI has also proved problematic when it comes to TB testing.
“Not everyone has a handling pen on out farms. I have land in four different blocks, there is cattle on them all and only a handling pen on one. So, it’s a whole day of gathering them up for the testing and then do you keep them in or put them out for the reading? It doesn’t make sense to a farmer the way things are. You just feel as if you’re getting nowhere here.”
To listen to Sean’s full interview search UFU Podcast Farming 24/7 on Spotify and Amazon Music. The link is also available on its social media pages.
