All clear after TB scare at abattoir

I like to think that I am generally an optimistic person, but recently, it seems that we are lurching from one catastrophe to another.

Last month we sent a lorry load of cattle to the Waitrose slaughterhouse in Yorkshire, only for oneADVERTISEMENTof the steers to be detained with lesions on its lungs, which was suspected to be TB.

This in turn meant that we were, rightly, put under cattle movement restrictions to contain any potential disease outbreak.

It was then suggested to us by the ministry vets that we check test the rest of our cattle, all 500 of them!

We had the results of the tests back the other day and, thankfully, they proved negative.

Then, last week, the news that we have all been dreading, that Bluetongue has been diagnosed on a farm near Ruthin.

We all hoped that as we enter the autumn, that we would be able to hold off vaccinating our livestock until next spring, but this has come as a major setback, and all so avoidable - enough said!