Most of the Wassledine farm is grassland, some of which is old water meadows, with boggy bits and rushes, old willow trees, and hedgerows. Our Red Poll cattle have an important conservation job to do. Without cows in the countryside, lowland grassland habitats would lose out. Wet meadows, rich in species need to be grazed to prevent encroachment from scrub. Native breeds of cattle at a low stocking density do an excellent job of messy grass cutting – leaving long tufty bits as well as short cropped areas creating variation which a wealth of insects, small mammals and birds depend on. Not to mention the whole ecology associated with cow pats – see below.
A celebration of untidiness
Quite a few years ago we recognised the potential importance of our small piece of grassland in this intensively arable part of Bedfordshire. Although many of our neighbours work some excellent habitat creation into their arable systems – beetle banks, diverse margins, hedgerows, small woods and ponds – our twenty or so hectares of grassland seem vital as a reserve for many birds, mammals and invertebrates. So we celebrate our untidy and overgrown hedges, the rich variety of herbs growing in the hedgerows and throughout the grassland (weeds maybe!), the boggy, low bits that never dry out even in the driest of summer heat and that make it rather difficult to walk through there in February, and even the rampant waves of bramble that threaten to overtake the whole farm but which provide homes and food for so many animals.
Granted, all this needs some looking after and controlling. But we like to take a light touch, clearing mechanically in the late summer, when needed, to allow people through on footpaths or to maintain open meadows (the blackthorn and bramble would take over the world if we let them!). In fact that’s where the cattle come into their own. They munch their way through a great deal of the vegetation in the summer leaving only the species they don’t like – ragwort, thistles, rushes, buttercups, knapweed, wild carrot (actually they’re quite fussy) and of course only doing some light nibbling on the prickliest things.
We all love a cow pat
Well maybe not, but perhaps we should. Cow dung can play an important role in the field ecology of a farming system like ours, so pats deserve your consideration. We avoid using chemical wormers whenever possible in our cattle’s general health management. That doesn’t mean we neglect their health of course; just that we monitor their parasite load each year and only treat if absolutely essential for their well-being. And because stocking density is always low, it’s very rare that we do need to use wormers. The main chemical we mean is Ivermectin. These discovered in 1975 and approved for veterinary use in 1981 – surprisingly recently I thought. Like many modern medicines, this is something of a wonder drug, being capable of killing all manner of parasites, both internal and external, in humans as well as animals – I won’t go into detail because it will make you itch! Enough to say that, like many other drugs, we have overused them. Their particular issue is that once treated with Ivermectin, a cow excretes traces in its faeces and those traces remain active, killing many of the natural inhabitants of a cow pat. And that’s a shame since a cow pat can be a whole world of life in itself. You’ve seen rooks and jackdaws picking over pats in search of larvae – that’s a sure sign there’s good stuff to eat in there. We learned recently that serotine bats particularly like dung beetles and are often seen in and around cattle pastures, catching adult beetles. Of course we were thrilled to learn that we have serotines on our farm in Gravenhurst, and they wouldn’t be here without the cattle.
..and flies!
It’s difficult to feel positive about flies, even for me, and they are a nuisance to the cattle especially on a hot summer afternoon when there’s no breeze. However, those flies are an important part of our field ecosystem. Their larval stages do all sorts of interesting and important things that I won’t dwell on here while you’re eating your breakfast. But the adults are food for many other animals and so play a vital role in the farm’s well-being. If one simply considers the birds that catch and feed them to chicks each spring, they have to be essential – from the smallest midge to the largest, scariest buzzy beastie!
Our cattle
We run a small suckler herd – that means the calves stay with their mothers, growing fast on the rich creamy milk they produce. So we don’t milk our cows but instead rear excellent beef from happy animals. Read more about how we produce our beef in as natural a way as possible.
To read more about the wildlife on the farm click here
Find out more about the cattle here.
To read more about our Red Poll beef, click here
