Opinion: ‘Bird in the hand’ approach brings farming benefits

Risk management. It might sound like something practised by insurance brokers and airline pilots, but it’s something we all do every day.

From decisions we make almost subconsciously such as “Have I got time to cross the road before the bus hits me?” to major business decisions, our brains are beavering away calculating whether the reward justifies the potential for failure.

I have been thinking about this recently after we opted to vaccinate the lambs against clostridial diseases, the collection of soil-borne bacteria that can cause a sudden spate of deaths.

Immunity

As they grow, their maternal immunity fades and, when this coincides with other external stresses such as large day and night temperature fluctuations, their immune system can become rapidly overwhelmed.

Highly effective vaccinations have been around for years, but they don’t come cheap – at about 90p a lamb.

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For many years, we had not bothered with the vaccine and have managed to get away with zero losses.

Until last year, that is, when we lost about 20 lambs in one traumatic weekend.

Cue flustered phone calls to the vet and a rapid administration of vaccine and precautionary antibiotic to the rest of the flock.

Shutting the stable door

This was frustrating because I felt like a bad stockman, rushing out to shut the stable door once the horse had already bolted.

We were reluctant to pen them up and stick needles in them in case the added stress caused another round of deaths.

I also pride myself on using as few antibiotics as possible to make my own tiny contribution to preventing antibiotics resistance.

Happily, following the treatment we didn’t have any more casualties.

Quids in?

If you set aside the duty of care we have to the stock and take a purely financial view, you could argue that we are still quids in, as the cost of vaccinating over the course of, say, 10 years would still exceed that of the value of the stock we lost (assuming such a catastrophe could be guaranteed to happen only once or twice in that time).

But losing those lambs was a timely reminder we were putting another variable beyond our control, and perhaps it is surprising we hadn’t lost a significant amount of lambs sooner, or more frequently.

So this year, suitably chastened, we have opted for prevention rather than cure and hope that it will be effective.

Keeping sheep alive is, after all, a constant (and often enjoyable) battle.

Many factors that affect our profitability are beyond our control, so all opportunities to capture some territory from the enemy should be enthusiastically seized.

After all, as every general knows, the object of any war is to win by making the fight as unfair as possible.

Of course, all of these facts were at our disposal in the years when we didn’t vaccinate, and a year would rarely go by where we didn’t hear of one farmer or another who had been afflicted.

Human condition

This is typical of the human condition. We have all had warnings from those who have had bad experiences and in spite of that have taken no heed. “Don’t touch the hotplate,” springs to mind, along with: “Slow down” or “You’ll fall off that”. Who hasn’t ignored one of those?

What makes other people so fascinating is the different risk-management responses they display when presented with similar circumstances.

Most days, I feel grateful at how trivial the crises facing me are in comparison with many others, particularly in light of recent political events.

We all have one friend or acquaintance who will throw caution to the wind in pursuit of profit, promotion or the alluring stranger across the bar – even if they are already holding someone else’s hand.

Similarly, we also all know the one who will always play it safe, fearful of risking a bird in their hand even for the chance of two or more in the bush.

Glamour

It is a lot easier to find a tale of the former than the latter in the press or in conversation, for where is the glamour of someone patiently making incremental gains over many years, paying off their credit card in full every month, when the story can be heard of the dashing hero who built an empire after betting his last £50 on black in the casino?

So let me salute those who are content with what they have got.

The opposite of the Michael Goves of this world, who are seemingly prepared to tread on everyone on their journey to the top because nothing previously had left them feeling fulfilled.

A world full of people like that might not have got us to the top of Everest as quickly or flung men into space with such gusto, but how clear a conscience do they have when they slide into bed at night?

Although I regard myself as a pretty cautious individual, there are things we all do that with the benefit of hindsight seem pretty reckless.

Particularly when at the time they are the path of least resistance – or when one has had a glass or two of “social inhibition remover”.

Planning

I suppose my philosophy is we don’t know what the future holds, but the optimistic thing to do is to plan for it and plan well, and exhibiting a degree of caution may well give you a few more options when the ticking “unforeseen event” timebomb erupts underneath you, as it does to us all from time to time.

If that means I miss the long-shot opportunity that makes someone else their millions, so be it.

Andrew lives near Newtown in mid-Wales. After graduating with a degree in agriculture from Aberystwyth University in 2011, he returned to the area he was from, where he now spends Mondays droving at Welshpool market and the rest of the week working with his parents on their upland beef and sheep farm.