I’m a farmer, ask me anything

[AskAFarmer]

As title! :)

Not sure if you'll know the answer to this as it's not directly farming related, but if Lidl/Aldi are so good in terms of buying British/welfare, how are they so cheap? I'm assuming their meat is cheaper than elsewhere?

I don't have a question but I think this is the most interesting ama thread there's been in a while

Not sure if you'll know the answer to this as it's not directly farming related, but if Lidl/Aldi are so good in terms of buying British/welfare, how are they so cheap? I'm assuming their meat is cheaper than elsewhere?

They’re cleverer. They’ll often ring round the abattoirs and say ‘what have you got loads of?’ ‘Pork chops?’ and then pork chops will be offer of the week. Etc.

Also, they just price more fairly. We get paid between £3-£4 per kilo (ish) for lamb, Tesco will be selling it at £9-£10 per kilo.

Glad everyone’s enjoying the thread

Usually all you ever hear about farming is ‘oh it’s 24/7, it’s a hard life, I only make tuppence a year and I work 8 days a week’ etc etc - just moaning really
You don’t often get the real realities. So thanks for reading :)

How vigilant do you have to be in relation to animal rights activists?

Where we live it’s not too bad. Makes me very angry though to see someone’s grandad getting assaulted for trying to get into the mart.

When i first got into farming with misty eyed dreams of a 'family farm' an older farmer said to me 'the family farm is dead, it just doesnt know it yet'. At the time i frothed and raged at this thought. 14yrs on, i see he was 100% correct.

See I don’t think that’s right - where I live it’s all family farms, I know loads of other people on family farms in other areas too. Long may it continue, I hope!

I went up to Adam Henson's farm and he has a lot of rare breeds. I also saw a 'sheep show' about which sheep were popular through history. I really brought it home to me that if we did all go vegan there wouldn't be any cows/sheeps/pigs/chickens because his place illustrated that once a breed isn't 'useful' or the highest yielding it stops being bred, on the whole. Same with fruit & veg.

Yes, it’s a shame to see the old breeds dying out.
Adam Henson’s farm is just like a play farm tbh though - you can’t make money on such a mix of rare breeds like he has. But it’s nice to see, if you’ve got the money for it.

OP, do you have any 'pet' animals?

A naughty pet dog in the house (but the workers are pets too really - despite never coming in the house), and ponies for the children.
I’d like a cat but DH doesn’t like them. One day!

My last pet lamb on the bottle this year has just died.

We’ve been locked into a battle of wills for nearly a week now - he didn’t want to drink milk, and I wouldn’t give up, every few hours making bottles and trying to persuade him to live. He was getting thinner but last couple of days started improving, and yesterday really turned a corner. I was saying to DH last thing how he was really starting to take the bottle and have more interest in life etc etc, and how I thought he’d just get better and better now.

Anyway this morning he was dead. That’s gratitude for you.

@askafarmer I'm very sorry to hear about your lamb 😔

Something you said a few pages back about people really getting a shock when they find out how much high welfare meat really costs to provide has given me another question ;-)

Do you think the Brits en masse will ever prioritise taste / welfare / etc over price when it comes to shopping for food? I live in France now, and while there are plenty of people shopping in supermarkets and looking for bargains, I'd say that the French are still willing to spend a lot more on food - and they prioritise quality over price whenever they can. I find it really odd when I go back to the UK that people who could easily afford to spend more on high-quality food (like my parents and many of their baby boomer-era friends) persist in buying non-free range eggs and the cheapest trays of supermarket chicken. And they boast about how little they spend!

As a related aside, my aunt & cousins were in pig farming (also in Scotland) and spent a fortune getting geared up to meet the higher welfare standards for rearing pork that had been demanded by the great British public... then the same great British public went right on buying cheap Danish bacon.

Do you let the local hunt on your land and what are your thoughts on their place in fox control?

My last pet lamb on the bottle this year has just died. Yes you put so much effort into them but if they don't want to sook then not much you can do. We have some 'pets' on a shepherdess bucket. One was picked up from the field and almost dead but has revived really well but another died yesterday unexpectedly for no real reason.

Sorry, just putting my question up again as think it got lost in the previous posts.

OP, I walk through fields a lot and always stick to the footpath but on a couple of occasions have veered off slightly due to a) ewes and lambs all resting by a gateway, I went through an adjacent field to avoid disturbing them b) similarly walking through a field with new born calves and cows, dipped through a hedge to avoid antagonising them. I spent both times worrying that I would be yelled at for trespassing from a distance but wouldn't be able to yell back my reasoning. Is that acceptable in those circumstances or not?

Rabbit You'd be much better walking through the sheep field. Don't ever go through a field with cows and calves. It's dangerous.

rabbit I think the issue with your question is that every farmer/footpath and general temperament of the animals is different so it's hard to answer generally.

However, generally I think most farmers would prefer you to stick to the footpaths and it's up to you to do your own personal risk assessment as to if you want to continue on the path or turn back.

On our farm we would be pretty cross if we found you somewhere you shouldn't be because you wanted to avoid disturbing sheep and lambs in a gateway, because to us that would seem ridiculous. We would be more understanding about people wanting to avoid cows with calves because they can seem pretty scary, but even so if it's a reasonably well used walk it's likely the cows will be used to people passing through.

I think sometimes people struggle to make the distinction between public rights of way and public footpaths.

Have you done the Young farmers dos? Is it very active in your area?

I hit a wall with them when I was pregnant and haven't been since. Will be sending the kids when they are old enough. Great way to meet people.

Thank you Dexra and Scrowy. Both times I skirted the edge of the adjacent crop field and got back on the footpath asap. Probably only a couple of hundred yards each time. Ok re the sheep, the cattle though? Very young calves, I assessed that most of them were a distance away but one was right on the path, it's a really open field with no handy fence to vault over if they did decide to take umbridge! I was more scared of an irate farmer though tbh!

With cows and calves I wasn't familiar with if they were all stood up, taking an interest in you and you had to walk right through them I would probably try and find an alternative pathway or turn back.

If they are merely in the same field and nowhere near the path, or if they are all sat down relaxed chewing their cud I would walk through as quickly and quietly as I could, not getting in between calves and the rest of the herd (so yes I would deviate from the path in your scenario to go round the calf).

If I had a dog with me I wouldn't even consider going in. Ever. Not even with my own cows. Nearly all cow attacks are on people with dogs.

I wouldn't go through a crop field as that's where you would be most likely to cause damage and you wouldn't know what they might have been sprayed with.

Regarding problem crows, would a farmer who isn't you consider just dealing with the problem in the most obvious way? In the states I believe farmers use the phrase 'shoot, shovel and shut up'.

Scrowy agree never take my dog in with me and cows. Didn't walk on a single crop shoot as I edged the field, so close to the hedge I was scratched to buggery

@houseoftoys I was going to ask the YFC question too!
I grew up on a farm, which my brother now owns and farms and have many, many relatives who are farming.
I live a very suburban life now, but it saddens me how disconnected the majority of the population is from the realities of UK food production, and how ‘useless’ for want of a better word the UK farming industry is at promoting the very high welfare standards we have here.
For example the myths people believe about hormone and antibiotic usage to promote growth.
Threads like this do help, but if you ‘ruled the world’ what would you do? ( that’s a question for the other farmers on here too!)

When you say your dog lives ‘free range’ - what does that mean?

And you said you have a pet dog that lives in the house but the workers don’t - why is that?

Pengrun working sheepdogs live outside.

When you say your dog lives ‘free range’ - what does that mean?

They just live outside like cats, getting up when they want and sleeping where they want. They usually all sleep together though.

And you said you have a pet dog that lives in the house but the workers don’t - why is that?

They stink. And they prefer being out.

Just dashing out, I’ll catch up with the rest later :)

What does the pet dog do while the others are working? Are they the same breeds?