The ESA Experience
The Oxfordshire sheep farmer, Paul Haskins, looks
at the Effects of an Environmentally Sensitive Area Scheme on the
Welfare of Grazing Livestock
British Agriculture seems to be
entering an increasingly unnatural regime. As
financial support from the public purse has more strings attached, the people
pulling the strings are further removed from agriculture. Specialists from
quite narrow disciplines can now influence how farmers manage their
businesses. I am concerned about the implications for animal welfare and so I
wish to record my experience of farming in the Upper Thames Environmentally
Sensitive Area (ESA) for ten years. There were many good aspects to the ESA
but here I am going to focus on animal welfare problems.
Almost half of my farm, 176 acres, was eligible
for entry to the Scheme at its inception in 1994. The northern boundary of the
farm is formed by the river Thames for over a mile and the Scheme covered the
riparian river meadows in the flood plain and one more field away from the
river as the land rose up. The higher fields were integrated
Administration and Control system (IACS) registered arable
land.
The land fell into three different tiers of the
ESA. Permanent pasture was either in 1B or 2 (wetland), where a ditch was
bunded to deliberately raise water levels. The arable land was planted in
grass to become 3A (arable reversion).
Quality Herbage
The predominantly heavy Oxford Clay soil on this
farm had always provided good crops of quality herbage without very intensive
management. The impact of joining the ESA was less on the permanent grass than
on the arable reversion land.
The grass
mixtures specified for the arable reversion tier were difficult to establish
and of very poor palatability to sheep. The wide range of restrictions on
management during the establishment period exacerbated the difficulty of
producing the desired balance between grass species of varied growth habits.
On naturally fertile fields, tall, dominant species, such as timothy,
smothered out the shorter grasses, especially as hay crops were left until
July for mowing. Late mowing also encouraged the establishment of creeping and
spear thistles.
Due to stocking rate limits, the palatability of
grazing declined very rapidly early in the season and the late mown hay had
very little nutritional value. It quickly emerged that this regime would not
satisfy the nutritional requirements of a modern ewe with lambs. Supplemental
feeding was banned for its association with over- stocking but was, in fact,
necessary because of under stocking. There was a risk of ewes suffering
metabolic stress through malnourishment in the summer or acidosis in winter
because of the level of concentrates fed to balance nutritionally bankrupt
hay.
Untidy stubble
The late mowing was also detrimental to the
aftermath. It was especially obvious on one field that had a fence across the
middle. One side had always been mown in July, the other in early June. The
late cut side has vegetation that always remains erect until it is cut and
this leaves an open stubble. The side previously cut in June, when left until
July, lodged. This reduced the yield by up to half and left a very untidy
stubble. Much of the lodged grass had already begun to rot and was of poor
value as hay. The thick mat left on the ground suppressed re-growth and
frustrated the ESA's intention of promoting botanical diversity by allowing
annuals to reseed. This shows that a much more gradual shift in the mowing
date of permanent pasture would be more realistic to allow the sward to slowly
adapt.
Re-creation of permanent pasture requires active
management. Weather conditions, the natural fertility and recent management
history will all affect how a mixture of grasses establishes. Much greater
flexibility in the first year would have helped. Fields with an arable history
can still require sub-soiling to maintain soil health.This was not allowed in
the ESA, allowing soil to consolidate in a way that would not represent its
natural state.
The ESA sought to produce swards one might
associate with poor fertility on naturally rich soil. Clover was not allowed
in the mixtures but, over the ten years, returned naturally and is a normal
constituent of permanent pasture in the region. Had the clover been present at
the outset, supplying nitrogen, the grass would have performed better and
suppressed undesirable weeds.
Spectacular failure
The greatest difficulty in arable reversion was
to promote biodiversity without encouraging thistles, ragwort or other
undesirables. The ESA failed spectacularly. Despite a derogation to spray
once, some of the arable reversion fields ended up with over fifty percent
ground cover of thistle. Spear thistle could be controlled through a variety
of 'spot' treatments, although this did take many days of hard labour;
however, creeping thistle seemed uncontrollable. Under ESA management, ragwort
colonised land where it had not been seen within living memory. One 28-acre
crop of hay had to be chopped and left to rot because there was too much to
hand rogue. Sheep will graze large quantities of ragwort whilst it is young,
making it difficult to estimate how much they have ingested. The accumulation
of poisonous alkaloids can result in liver sclerosis, which may not be obvious
for up to eighteen months. This makes positive diagnosis of poisoning very
difficult.
Thistle burden
The thistle burden impacted on the livestock in a
variety of ways. The thistle thorns cause oral abscesses and may be
responsible for the ingression of listeria which leads to meningitis.
Scratches around the mouth greatly encourage the spread of orf and irritation
of udders increases the mastitis risk. The level of thistles was sufficient to
preclude haymaking on a number of fields. As a result, there was no break from
grazing, which encouraged an endoparacites build-up. The fields, which could
be cut for hay, had to be cut each year instead of resting them with grazing,
and yields fell rapidly.
Because topping of grazing was delayed by at
least a month, the nutritional value of grazing plummeted during June
especially. By the time it was topped, it was so mature that it had produced
seed and was reluctant to grow any aftermath.
The height of the un-topped sward made
observation of livestock very difficult. Not only did the time taken to check
animals go up greatly, but many problems were simply not observed. By
mid-June, fields were dominated by thistles and nettles up to five feet high.
Sheep ailments, which would normally be treated quickly, escaped notice and,
in the worst cases, carcasses were simply found when the field was eventually
topped. Not much chance of complying with the government's on-farm
burial ban!
The ground level microclimate was more
shaded, warm and wet than normal sheep grazing. This was conducive to the
survival of worm larvae and foot rot infection. The jungle also favoured fly
strike, which was also encouraged by dirty sheep back ends, due to the
increased worm burden.
It seems very standard advice in veterinary
books to either fence livestock out of wet area or else improve drainage to
deny habitat to the snails, which arc vectors of liver fluke. In tier 2 of the
ESA, a ditch was bunded in order to raise the water level in a number of
fields for the benefit of wading birds. There was a clear increase in the
incidence of liver fluke. There is a growing difficulty with resistance to
anthelmintic treatments for round worms, requiring the rotation of products
used, and this increases the difficulty of using flukicides as
well.
Wetland
habitats are particularly important in conservation but hostile to normal farm
livestock. There was a general difficulty with the artificial bunching of the
farm's workload under ESA rules.
Operations normally spread during May and June, such as harvesting and topping
grass, all came due simultaneously in July. Other operations, such as muck
spreading on the aftermaths, all contributed to the exaggerated July workload.
Such pressure put added pressure on routine stock tasks at this time of
year.
At a time when general financial pressure on
agriculture can impact on animal welfare, the increased costs of combining
conservation with farming stretches resources to the limit. Labour costs
greatly increased, halving stock rates obviously doubles the cost per animal
of fencing/ and the effort of topping overgrown fields takes many tractor
hours and a great deal of diesel oil.
The land in the ESA was not able to stand on its
own. Because of the poor quality of herbage, an unusual amount of
conventionally grown cereals were produced for animal feed on the rest of the
farm. It was also necessary to plant extra grass leys on land out of the ESA
which, with the use of artificial fertiliser, could provide grazing both early
and late in the year when the ESA grass failed to grow. For some periods,
stock were excluded from the ESA and obviously had to have some- where else to
go. The conservation benefits of the ESA are offset by the effects on the rest
of the farm.
The British
landscape is an unnatural artefact. It is a palimpsest of agricultural history
created as a by-product of farming. The obvious way to ensure continuity of
its management is selectively through agricultural activity. Sheep have
created much of the landscape people love and the optimum level of grazing is
the only way to preserve the landscape but other objectives should never
override the welfare of livestock, which are sentient beings, not just cheap
lawnmowers. The management of sheep must remain the domain of shepherds, not
academics, bureaucrats or the pantheon of non-farming experts taking an
interest in the countryside.
Paul Haskins is a member of NSA and can be
contacted at Camden Farm, Radcot Road, Faringdon. Oxfordshire. SN7
8DY