There is always one cow that causes some trouble and slips out

Brucellosis is an infection with a nasty bacteria Brucella abortus. From the name you can imagine the most important outcome. Abortion of the calf.

It is a highly contagious disease and spreads easily between cattle and their calves. Although it causes an abortion, most often this only occurs in one pregnancy and after that the cow appears to calve normally.

It will however be passing large amounts of bacteria after calving.

Brucellosis in people is only really caused by drinking unpasteurized milk or eating soft cheeses from infected animals or soft cheeses.

If you jabbed yourself accidentally when giving a vaccine against brucellosis, that could also give you some grief with the disease. So the vet has to be careful.

However as most milk is now pasteurised and regular checks are carried out to check for brucellosis, the disease amongst humans is virtually unheard of now in this country.

The contentious issue is of course the transmission of brucellosis by badgers to cattle. Cattle are destroyed if they react to the brucellosis test.

Badgers are protected. At the moment.

So that’s the background to today exercise. Rather than bring all the herd and their followers home, John decided to collect the cattle in the corral area where the crush and walkway can be sited.

The cattle are used to coming into this collecting area as they have to walk through to pass from one grazing field to another.

The gates are shut at both end and the fun starts.

There is always one cow that causes trouble. In this case an old girl who had seen this carry on before and was going to make sure she slipped out before anyone had the chance to shave some hair off her neck and give her a quick jab for a reactor test.

Every time a cow was let out into the adjoining field from the crush after their jab, she was pushing and shoving to get through the gate.

Health and safety would have a field day. The young vet, who was carrying out the test, sweated buckets.

He was clad in a rather fearsome protective set of garments. Suitable for working in a plague zone where he might come into contact with air borne infectious spores.

I exaggerate of course but he was certainly wearing enough rubber wear to keep any fetishist happy.

As the cow numbers dwindled and even the bull had been through for his jab, Mrs Houdini was still prancing around out of reach and trying to push her way to freedom.

Silly girl though. She thought she had spotted an alternative route out of the corral down the walkway. She had. Straight into the crush.

The vet will be back later in the week to see if any of the herd has reacted and if they have it will be very bad news.

But the herd is closed and as far as we know there is no badger transmission of the disease on the farm.

Fingers crossed.

Mrs Down’s Diary