Awful weather

[ann]

Hi we seem to be so far missing all the snow here on the East coast, how is everyone else faring, we where down on numbers on saturday at our group AGM due to some of our members being snowed in, which was a great shame as they missed a pleasant meeting and a very nice meal.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

the Isle of Bute has not had a huge amount of snow,almost none at sea level but just a wee bit up the hill there is four inches. But having any at all especially in late March is exceptional. We have had day after day of almost gale force east wind, bitter cold. The swimming pool building in Dunoon lost part of its roof at the weekend, and ferries have been disrupted. We are only a few miles from Arran which has suffered terribly, still huge amounts of repair work to do there before everyone will have mains electricity again.

I decided on Sunday morning not to travel to Stoneleigh for the DCS council meeting, had thought it might have been cancelled, but no one asked my opinion. The last meeting with much better weather forecasts I ended up not getting to hotel in Gourock for the return journey till 2am the next day, having endured blizzard conditions for most of the 90 miles from Carlisle to Glasgow. Could not face that again - I have a 5am start the next morning to get the first boat back to Bute for a days work.

Duncan

[Broomcroft]

We've got deep drifts everywhere to the top of gates and hedges. I've got 200 ewe lambs I haven't seen for a some days now, and I've no way of getting to them, snow just too deep. There's good tree cover down where they are as it's next to a wood, so hope they had the sense to get over that way.

May try the tractor tomorrow to get to them, but even if I get there, not a lot I can do to be honest. All cattle, breeding ewes and tups are all inside and have been for months! We're in the middle of lambing but luckily we've got enough shed space to cram all the ewes and lambs in till hopefully it clears up next week or two. It's all a bit desperate and I feel real sorry for hill farmers.

I've heard of locals here lambing outside right now, must be horrendous. Got 2 vet students helping us lambing and calving, and they have friends who can't get to the farms they were booked into.

And when it all thaws out, it'll just be a muddy mess for a while. My computers just given me a reminder to seed new leys next week, fat chance!!!

[Rob R]

I'm sorry about the weather - it's our fault. We had a couple of dry weeks here and decided to get the digger in for a week to tidy up - then the rain started, which turned into snow, and then into strong winds. The winds have certainly dried the place up, but I'm hoping that's not going to be so it can dump a load of snow on us, as the sheep are all outside here and due to start lambing in April. We decided to calve a little bit later this year too & am so glad we made that decision. The last two years means throwing the farming rule book out of the window.

[domsmith]

Saw footage of the snow around galloway last night on scottish news. Livestock stuck in small pockets of clear ground surrounded by deep snow.
Seeing it, you think there must be thousands of dead stock lieing under the drifts.

We have very little snow but the easterly winds are brutal. it would be normal to get snow now, but the degree of cold is breath taking. but the ground is dry. if i have to lamb and calve in this, it could be worse!
cows looking very sad out side.

thankfully we have plenty of fodder in stock, i have bought up everything offered to me, expensive but peace of mind we can feed right through the summer if required!

i dont think the word profit will be used this year!

dom

[Broomcroft]

I have now managed to see my ewe lambs and they're all on the leeward side of one hill where the snow has been blown off. Not sure they're all there obviously but there's certainly a lot of them. We lamb at this time of year to avoid bad weather and hit the grass growth!

Anyhow, fingers crossed that it'll come good next week or two .

[nuttalls]

hi all, we are as high as shap, it was bitter,roads blocked and still loads of snow behind walls, we squashed all sheep in as we had started lambing, few nearby have lost ewes and lambs some still not found,sad all round jean