Archers thread #185: Some farming would be nice. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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Over to you!

not sure in the UK but in Germany i only buy eggs with the label "no male chicks are killed"

I only buy free range and as often as i can i buy organic.

I checked what happens, there are several options. They can destroy the males before they hatch. (i don't know how you sex a chick still in the egg or when buti assume experts can tell). Or they are sent into the meat industry. Or the egg producers buy exclusively female chicks in the first place.

The death by shredding method (and caged chickens come to that) are illegal here.

Good point. Dunno. Not going to stop eating eggs, though.

OK, found this. https://www.rspcaassured.org.uk/farmed-animal-welfare/egg-laying-hens/what-is-chick-maceration/

It seems most male chicks of egg-laying breeds are gassed and used as food for exotic pets. Not economic to keep them and eat them when fully grown as egg-laying breeds are specifically selected not to have large breasts and fleshy legs. The opposite applies to chickens bred for meat so we eat both male and female chickens. Maceration is a permitted method of killing male chicks but according to the RSPCA very little used in the UK. Good.

No, you are not obliged to but if you refuse they will ask a Judge to authorise a RIPA authority which would compel you to provide them.

If the device isn’t owned by you then yes, you could explain that and say you need to speak to your employer etc. If the police don’t believe anyone is in immediate danger they should be fine with that but will still take the device.

This is all quite topical given the number of young people arrested at protests outside arms factories who live with their parents.

Ha ha, yes, she does have a number of layers doesn’t she? I remember how kind she was to Chelsea over the abortion.

The crops that we grow globally to feed cattle is economically and environmentally weird. It would take a lot less resources to just feed people from plants (even taking into account land that is harder to grow on). And thats what will have to happen eventually- especially with water shortages.

And that’s why you can’t really have the dairy industry either. The farmers can barely stay afloat as it is. They can’t also afford to keep male calves alive or allow cows to stay with their young or produce in more natural cycles. They have to keep producing milk to be viable. The cows are pregnant a lot and then killed when that is no longer viable. I’m a bit surprised when people don’t realise this.

there isn’t a very strong argument for meat and dairy from an economic and environmental perspective. And it’s so hard to sustain on a smaller less industrial scale (see keeping animals alive for very little return/ profit).

I remember a radio programme with the world food security committee around 15 years ago. The panelists on the show ate meat but said in 20 years we would have no choice but to be vegan. Every single one said that which was quite surprising to me.

From an ethical perspective is very much personal choice. But it’s hard to argue the economic and environmental impact of it.

Goodness, you have been busy chatting. I assumed that you’d all been having busy BH weekends and/or couldn’t think of anything nice to say about the weekend’s drama.

Rochelle visiting Joy could have been shunted off into an Ambridge Extra without really affecting many others.

Then David, Ruth, Jazzer, Chelsea, Alan could have talked about farming stuff for the past month.

Thanks for the R4 Extra hint; I enjoyed that.

I have been vegan since 2001 and so I haven’t looked much up for years (I’m not an animal rights kind of person and I don’t have much affinity with animals).

but I have just googled and it seems there is supposed to be calfing every year. The dairy cow gets 60 days off a year from producing milk if they breed on schedule. I was quite surprised that the RSPCA campaign for better conditions- I thought it was all super regulated.

I wonder how what would happen if you allowed them to calf naturally. Presumably there’d be no money in it.

One of my daughters works on a very large dairy farm, which milks around 4000 cows. It is about as ethical as you can get on such a large scale. The cows are spread over a number of farms, they are small cows (mainly jersey cross so high quality milk) and yes they have to calve every year to in order to produce milk. But they use sexed semen, so always have female calves, and any cows that don’t take with AI run with a terminal (beef) bull so their calves go on to be beef cattle. The cows live a long life - often 10 to 12 lactations, and live outside as much as possible.

It might no be perfect but the cows look well and whilst not having individual names etc are certainly looked after.

I know cows aren’t buffalo but wild buffalo will have one pregnancy a year

i don’t think that’s unusual for wild herbivore like antelope etc

Same daughter has also worked on an egg unit. There they had both birds in cages and free range. The cages were the new, larger, enriched ones and she reckoned the hens were quite happy. Only about 10% of the free range hens ever left the hen house to go outside - most pottered around inside. Outside was just a bare area (hens soon get rid of any grass etc).

Organic eggs have a far lower stocking density and the hen houses have to be moved around so the hens get grass. I think more of these do venture outside, and so I tend to buy organic.

However, whatever system is used the hens are still slaughtered at 18 months as the egg quality deteriorates, as does the productivity of the hens.

@Moleculethats interesting. I had no idea on life span until googling today. I tried to find non animal rights kind sources (if that makes sense) to guard against bias. But 10-12 lactations does seem a lot by google’s standards. They’d be about 13 by the time they were culled. Where most sources suggest more like 6 or 7. That’s a huge difference.

Calving naturally would involve having a bull in with the cows all the time and not all farms keep a bull. It is more economical and also avoids inbreeding to use Artificial Insemination and sperm can be sexed to avoid male calves.

No, it just means that Usha can't put forward a case that she didn't do anything. She could, for example, simply leave it to the prosecution to put their case and possibly then submit there is no case to answer. It seems more likely that she'd advise Rochelle to offer a plea on something very low level but to put forward a case that she thought she was just facilitating a peaceful demonstration and knew nothing about broken bottles, tying people up, poisoning meat etc.

Molecule you and your daughter don’t fancy a gig as agricultural story advisors, do you?

I suppose Brookfield is a much smaller affair, but I’ve often wondered about Josh’s egg empire.

As an aside, did anybody else watch that Ch4 series where contestants had to audition for a 15 year tenancy of an NT farm and holiday cottages in Snowdonia? “Our Dream Farm”.

It is a huge difference, and I’m surprised that the supermarket that buys the milk doesn’t make more of it. Some of the large Holstein cows only manage 3 or 4 lactations, have poor health but produce a massive amount of milk. I think it’s these that tend to be farmed very intensively in indoor units.

Molecule you and your daughter don’t fancy a gig as agricultural story advisors, do you?

I think when they get onto agriculture they’re no too bad (don’t start me on anything equine - Shula and harness are one of my major low points) except that the vet is called out for the most trivial of things. Most farmers deal with minor injuries themselves, keep a stock of penicillin and are pretty good at treating their animals. The vet tends to a last resort.

Saw the last one as my Mum has been following it.

Second the idea of getting Molecule and Molecule Jr in as Ag Eds! I've learned more about farming from these posts than TA has managed in months and months. On a similar note, I listened to this programme the other day. Not a dicky bird from TA on this vital issue. Why on earth not? It's absolutely vital to the future of farming as it is to any other business to have a good handle on how much money you will have coming in. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002bs13

@PatChaunceysFruitCake In real life we could assume Rochelle has refused legal assistance because she will have been offered free legal advice repeatedly by the custody officer. There would be no need to phone Usha unless she was your preferred choice of solicitor.

It would be cunning, though, to choose Usha. Because then when she makes a complete hash of it, you'd be able to appeal.

I'm confused about where Bennie and the bairns fit into Rochelle's life story.

The way Rochelle talks about Saskia being a mother figure for her makes it sound as though she was taken in by Saskia and the commune as a teenager when Joy was effectively an absent parent - or at least when she was young. Dud she then meet Bennie and have the two children and then go back to Saskia and the commune?

So, has she been with the commune continuously, or did she leave the commune for a few years to live with Bennie, or did she only join the commune after her relationship with Bennie, or is Bennie a member of the commune too?

Now that we have heard how passionately Rochelle believes that meat is murder how can we possibly be expected to believe in her relationship with Rex the pig farmer?

Utter bilge and sententious tripe.

IMO, Usha and Widderbeth in the same episode is cruel and unusual punishment.

oh, and Jack was never ‘called up’. It’s all so amateur.

Very much enjoying all the agricultural detail on the thread - only goes to reinforce my belief that the thread is better than the show these days.

Plots.
Saskia groomed Rochelle
Joy chins Saskia

Elizabeth’s dream 🙄

and whatever happened to the British stiff upper lip. Was it a siege? For all of 3 minutes?

and the VE Day stuff seems only designed as an ad for the Sunday play. Humanitarian aid🙄. It’s all so bloody worthy

wonder if anyone will treat Joy the way mick treated emma