I try and pride myself in being positive, and no matter how negative people get I always try and look for an upside if I can.

I recently had a CAFRE Business Development Group (BDG) meeting on my farm. The next day the adviser sent me a message basically congratulating me on staying positive about the suckler industry.

To be quite honest, it was the best thing he could have said to me considering the few days that I had just came through.

A couple of days previous I lost a cow with hypomagnesaemia (grass staggers) and the morning of the farm walk I had a dead calf.

So to say I was having a bad few days was an understatement. I was certainly finding it hard to be positive.

They were all calving without any assistance and calves got up to suck unaided

My autumn-calving cows had been going so well I was starting to think that it couldn’t last.

They were all calving without any assistance and calves got up to suck unaided.

There was only one heifer that had to be brought into the house as she ran away from the calf after calving, but she only had to be held inside for one day.

Everything else calved outside without any issues. But I’m long enough farming to know that when everything is going well, it is time to be extra vigilant. You can be sure that things will go wrong sooner or later.

Stagger

I have lick buckets with the cows so I was presuming everything would be okay.

When the cow started to stagger, I phoned the vet and in the meantime I administered a bottle of Magniject.

The vet came quickly and put some more into her. Before she left the cow was up standing so I thought all would be fine.

I was really struggling to remain positive

Unfortunately, the cow walked about for a couple of hours and then lay down and died. That same night I had another cow calved with a deformed calf that had part of its top jaw missing.

It got up and sucked so I thought it might survive. But it eventually died after a couple of days.

So perhaps it is no surprise that I was really struggling to remain positive. I am no different to anyone else and I find it hard when animals die.

Post

I didn’t want the dead calf lying about so I took it off to the collection centre.

When I got home the post had arrived and there was a nice handwritten letter from an 81-year-old lady from Wales.

Her husband died when her two sons were very young

She has been organising trips for a group of Welsh farmers for over 40 years.

This year she had brought the group to NI and I had the pleasure of having them on my farm.

Her husband died when her two sons were very young, and she continued to farm and bring up her family.

Her letter put everything into perspective for me

She still has over 100 suckler cows and her sons have good jobs and help her out in their spare time.

Her letter put everything into perspective for me. Worrying about losing a cow and a calf seemed very insignificant compared with what she had come through.

Farming can be tough and unforgiving, and we will all have hardship at some stage, but it is important to retain a perspective and remember that, as farmers, we have much to be thankful for.

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