The dictionary definition of 'stacked' is "heaped in an orderly arrangement", which is not the way I would describe our attempts to slot too many cattle of different ages, sizes and dietary requirements into our available housing this weekend.
The ravages of a TB herd restriction are probably worse than the constant testing and slaughter. Trade is at a standstill in any meaningful way, while as I described in a previous post, T-Beggars (the TB Eradication Group, or recycled T-BAG ) have proposed many more licensed movements in an effort to free up overstocked farms.
But having been on the receiving end of such trades for too many years, I can say that the pride of presenting and marketing good animals, in the best market climate and to the benefit of your business and not that of your very limited purchasers, is gone.
The 'exempt' finishing units want cheap supermarket fodder, nothing more and will buy down to a price.
And sales for pedigree breeding stock are very limited, meaning too many good cows, heifers and stock bulls end up on the hook.
The sale of the dairy herd left us cubicles for 90, which the beef fattening group have occupied with three cubicles each, all spring and summer. Automatic scrapers have been coaxed back into life, and these dormitories split into two sections, with some dry in calf cows and heifers and one bull in one half on a maintenance ration, while the 30 fatteners access maize and other goodies from the other side.
But after last weeks' gales and wet, the remaining cattle (32 cows, 32 calves and 2 bulls) were paddling. And although the grass was growing and they had access to kale, the mess on the fields from 664 stilettos was getting beyond a joke, so in they came. And Saturday involved a great deal of rearranging, re-batching and over a very, very long day.
Twenty weaned calves from the first group and eleven of the biggest newly weaned calves are now in the youngstock pens in a different part of the yards.
Twenty-one newly weaned smaller calves are in the front open yard, which normally houses the bulls, lining up against a gate where they can see and smell their mums, but not suck. And the four angus bulls which should have had this yard, have been turned back outside onto a ten acre field which they are busy digging holes in until they sort out who's the boss.
We were told that leaving a fence between mums and calves would ease the noise and stress of weaning sucklers. It didn't. And the valley is echoing to outraged howls from both sides.
We still have too many cows in one area, and have to mix and match again at some point to accommodate them safely. Then comes a strict cull on anything not in calf, not up to scratch - or producing calves not up scratch.
If we had been able to 'market' the bigger animals as stores instead of finishing them to slaughter, we would have had ample room.
So a few choice (and imaginatively descriptive) words were lobbed in the direction of the Right Honourable Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for (some) Animal's Health as we struggled to fit this quart into its pint pot, in howling gales and rain.
We fully expect that during such dire weather, the honourable gentleman was cosy in his armchair, reading a book on the life history of badgers.
