I read Farmers Guardian every week. For years now they have been highlighting the issue of dogs worrying livestock. Keep your dog on its lead when in the countryside and there are livestock about is the clear message.
But we, farmers, are not the problem and the message needs to go to a wider audience. If you watch TV there are often dogs on there, but they are rarely on the lead and are usually running free.
In fact, allowing your dog to run free has become a sort of norm and putting it on its lead is the exception. So as a start, why not take this message to the BBC; they are as bad as anyone on this.
I was once involved with a flock of sheep which had been attacked by dogs and it was well over six months before we could take any of the farm dogs anywhere near them. How do you put a price on that? You can't. They had such a panic reaction that they could have injured themselves.
Before we had the red card to leave the land we rented, we had a very long public footpath. This footpath was much used; the views were outstanding. But I also knew that the footpath was often used by a man who had two spaniels, which he allowed to run free.
For months I tried to catch him and then one day he jumped over a style right in front of me, closely followed by his two dogs.
I must have been in a good mood, because I explained patiently to him that he shouldn't let his dogs run free because there were lapwings, chicks and leverets in the fields he had just crossed, which was true, and his dogs would disturb them or even kill them. I was quite taken aback by his reaction. He was very indignant, suggesting his dogs would never do any harm.
I used to do a fair bit of shooting, so I know what a spaniel looks like when it has been hunting.
He started waving his arms about and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. Then he put his fist close to my face and his arm was inside my truck. Big mistake. In the back I had a particularly nasty sheepdog. He tolerated most people but he idolised me. His teeth clicked shut close to this man's arm, he nearly had my right ear off.
The man suddenly realised he was pushing his luck and disappeared over an adjacent style and I never saw him again.
The Covid-19-driven spike in dog populations will work its way through. It will not last much longer when people realise how much pet food costs and how much vets charge.
If you get injured or dead farm animals, take a photo and put the picture on social media and if you catch dogs chasing your animals get your gun and shoot them and put the dead dogs on social media as well. I suspect that is the only thing which will make any difference.
Always remember that most people see a pet as a member of their family. They won't like it if you get your gun out, but unfortunately that is the only sort of language which will make a difference and they will understand.
We, as farmers, are blamed for most things. For example, inflation, global warming and we still have the ‘right to roam' to come, so get your gun out, while you still can.
When we decide to become dairy farmers one of the things we sign up for is a lifetime of early mornings. It goes with the job.
I was okay at getting up early. It is surprising how the lure of the first cup of tea of the day will get you out of bed.
On top of that I always preferred the morning milking to milking in the afternoons. Going to fetch the cows in the early morning was always a bit of a treat and if there was someone else in the team who could milk and you had done the morning milking, it put you on the high moral ground.
The best device I ever had to get me awake was called a Teasmade. This would switch the light on and boil a kettle and sound an alarm so there was always a cup of tea waiting for you when it was time to get up.
Every night I would take a tray upstairs to bed and on it there would be water, milk, mugs and teabags and sugar. I would fill the kettle, position it over the teapot and plonk the tray on the floor.
There are always mice in an old farmhouse and I had known for some time that they had been visiting the tray in order to drink the milk.
One night my wife awoke and asked: "What was that noise?" It's surprising how much noise several mice can make when they are lapping milk.
Long story short, I was banned from ever taking a tray upstairs again and the Teasmade ended up in the bin.
After that, my daughter bought me a succession of alarm clocks. I particularly remember a plastic soldier which played a bugle to the tune of Reveille. I hated him. You switched him off by pressing down on his helmet. My fist demolished him one morning.
At present there are no cows to milk, so no need to get up early. But I still wake up three hours before my alarm goes.
I don't go back to real sleep, I doze a bit, I do my best thinking of the day and, for the first time in my life, I listen to the dawn chorus. I wonder who told carrion crows and wood pigeons they could sing?
