DEAR EDITOR: There will be tens of thousands of trees planted in ACRES which is great for the environment.

It’s also a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help animal welfare as our weather gets wetter and windier.

These plantations should be appropriately designed and maintained to provide shelter from prevailing winds to enhance animal welfare.

Work at the Scottish agricultural college and the SRUC highlights the importance of windbreaks for cattle husbandry.

The temperature at which animals lose heat faster than they can produce is their lower critical temperature (LCT).

The LCT of a suckler cow can be as low as -14°C in still dry conditions but this can rise to 14°C in wet and windy conditions.

The animal is then eating just to maintain its core body temperature.

We are all familiar with cattle with humped backs stuck in behind ragged hedges.