Archived News

17th October 2007

After a very stressful and resticting couple of months some of our staff are getting away on holiday, or so we thought until Amanda received a call from a DEFRA vet a few minutes ago.  Interesting, how did they come to have her number?   Anyway they need to undertake blood tests on cattle located outside the SZ and would like to take bloods from about 60 animals from each group.  They are not interested in those at Epsom and we have moved some under a general license at Abinger and Chappel Farm so it would mean catching up all the cattle at 12 or 13 locations.  They have gone off to decide whether they will test here, maybe there are too many cattle for them!

In the meantime Laurence is having to make some decisions as to which cattle are going to slaughter tomorrow and where the remaining cattle will be moved to for grass, or moved to more accessible fields so that the feeder wagon can reach them.

Cattle are weighed every so often to keep track of their growth and they are weighed before they go to slaughter to ensure they have reached their potential.  Over 100 are to be weighed this morning.

If DEFRA do decide to take blood samples from our herd, we will use that opportunity to check the weight of each animal as it goes through the cattle crush. Back