Mrs Down's Diary

"I'm paying 200 more for a carcass than I was six weeks ago," he said. "This import ban on Brazilian beef because of foot-and-mouth means there is a real shortage of home-produced beef."

Good. We've two bulls ready for market next week and then a steady stream to go after that.

The Government has followed EU guidance and recognised the endemic disease problem in countries it imports from. Brazil in this case. A rare praise point for Defra.

Supermarkets may still hold cold stores of Brazilian beef carcasses from before the import ban. So remember to buy British and only from your local butcher.

Foot-and-mouth movement restrictions last year caused by the carelessness of disease precautions at the Government research centre at Pirbright killed the lamb trade. Not so good. Lamb prices halved as a glut of fit animals all came on to the market at the same time when movement restrictions were lifted.

So, you win some you lose some in this game. Literally. By two o'clock this morning, John had lambed three ewes during the night and they had eight lambs between them. When he got up this morning at half five, to make my cup of tea of course and to check up again on the ewes, no more had lambed but there were only seven lambs in the pens.

It could not have disappeared, so where had it gone? Squashed between two bales of straw, that's where, and sharing a tiny space with a broody hen that had also squeezed into the minuscule gap between the big straw bales that are surrounding the lambing area under the big shed.

He brought the little thing into the kitchen and roused me to find a dog blanket to wrap her up in and a bottle and teat to give her a drink of milk substitute.

The bottom oven of the Rayburn is just the right temperature so I tucked her in there and tubed her some milk as she was too weak to feed.

She lasted until lunchtime. The smallest of triplets, she just did not have the reserves to fight back.

Why do lambs do such daft things? They drown themselves, hang themselves, garrotte themselves and this time '“ and it's not the first '“ squash themselves to death.

Then the cows started acting up. John had already come in swearing after they had climbed over the fence in the silage yard and pulled over a load of silage, trampling and fouling it.

He re-erected the fence, tidied up the silage and left the herd to it while he took some feed troughs down to a field where some of the established ewes and lambs have been turned into.

I went out to the foldyard as I could hear a lot of bellowing from the herd. They had done it again. Climbed over the fence at the silage face and were wrecking their feed.

Then I spotted that the connection that links the fence bar to a power source had failed. No wonder the cows were so reckless. They were no longer getting that little warning tingle on their noses that kept them at a distance from the silage face.

By then John had returned, and he reconnected the power source to the fence. We noted with satisfaction the old bull pulling back smartly once his nose end made contact. Shocking stuff.

This feature first appeared in the West Sussex Gazette April 2. To read it first, buy the West Sussex Gazette every Wednesday.