"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

J B wrote in message
...
"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

The "Rural Payments agency have a rolling programme of random
checks,
which intent to check every farm at least once in five years but
more
often for larger farms.

They came here just before FMD and then again last week.

These checks are reckonned by the RPA to take an
average of about three days,

All day Friday and Monday afternoon (two people) for our 500 (?) head

milk cows are a doddle, imagine putting 200 limi stirks or 60 limi beef
cows through ( especially if you have to fetch them down off the fell
before hand)


most happen at a couple of hours notice

They phoned us and made an apointment.


In theory 10% have to be totally unannounced. If you just have milk cows
then you will have no cattle in retention and claim no money direct so
they may not give you the full treatment. Normally they phone at 8am to
say they want to see you at 10am. They will be flexible and come
following day if you aren't there, but more than 48 hours delay they
damned near have to contact Brussels direct .

and every animal has its eartag checked, plus they go through all
your
movement records and will check them against other peoples records.

Most errors were either local mart and/or BCMS

BCMS yes, but our local mart has got a better record than a lot of
farmers we buy off.

offenders are dairy farmers whose cattle never move. They therefore
barely need tags as dairy farmers herds have more ID than you could
reasonably expect anyway.

All our cows have ear tags, although some are kept safely in the box
in
the office where there is less chance of loosing them!!

Dairy farmers tend to be the ones frantically
phoning for replacement tags because an old cow is booked in on to
OTMS
and at slaughter ALL tags have to be absolutely correct.

That's where Denimex come in for my praise, tags at 24 hours notice.
(0800 243 557)

I think that is a number UK readers might want to note down.

Farmer to farmer deals are possible without proper tags but
otherwise
you cannot move animals who are incorrectly tagged.

Are you suggesting that we would move animals without checking their
tags???

;-))


heaven forbid


They would sure have fun over here. I had one calf it took 3 years to catch.

One year I had a neighbors calf in wiht mine when I took them to market and
before I took them I asked him if he wanted to come get it or send it along
with mine. He ask how we would tell them apart. It was easy it was the one
that brought the most money. It out weighed mine about 150 pounds. He let it
go with mine.

The way we ran cattle on wheat pasture and used hot wire fence we would
often get calves mixed and just take care of the other fellows calves until
we gathered them for market. They would loose a day or two of gain if worked
them to get one or two out. A lot of places we would have to set up portable
corrals or drive them to a neighbors to pen them.

That would drive your regulators batty. As would the wild cattle that are
still out there in places.

Gordon