“And then came the dreaded phone call that said one of them had a lesion.
“Everyone said, ‘Don’t worry, it will turn out to be just avian TB and all will be fine.’
“But a week later it turned out to be bovine TB, and when they did a test on the herd we had lots of cows with TB.”
About 130 infected cows were found in the Waihou herd and about 40 in a second herd at Pukekohe (Dairy Exporter, April, page 106). It appeared the tuberculosis came from a line of cows bought in 2007. They had been tested each year. The TB was missed
What followed was life-shattering. Husband described TB as “a very isolating and horrible disease”. Inevitably the cows were subjected to movement control and the farm was subjected to a set of strictures.
“Three people turned up and you feel like you had done something wrong”.
His children were teased at school and told they should never have come to the district – that they had brought TB to the area
“And no-one wants to know you,” Husband said.
“It’s a disease that helps you find out who your real friends are.”
Counselling is available and support was offered (see shaded box). But Husband thinks farmers are a similar breed to firemen, a comparison he’s well able to make. “We don’t talk about our feelings, or break down and cry. This makes it hard for them to seek help.”
He described some help offered as “bureaucratic help”. The human side was lacking, he said.
One concern had been his family’s health. He recalled asking people from TBfree New Zealand: “Who’s going to test us? What if we’ve got TB, or the kids?”
His children had not been vaccinated. They had been drinking the milk and they had been drenching the cows.
Greater awareness of the needs of farmers and their families and their stress was needed, Husband said.
He recalled a dairy inspector turning up to advise him on what must be done and to spell out the rules – how to deal with milk from TB reactors, the need to have a clear action plan and so on.
“That was the day I was loading 80 of my best cows on my truck to go to the freezing works,” he said.
All his five children’s calf club calves had gone on the truck that day. His 21-year-old daughter’s cow had been in the herd since she was at primary school. The family were distraught and Husband was tense. He wanted to be left alone and was in no mood to be civil to the inspector.
“It’s a horrible situation, putting 80 of your best cows on a truck … emotions are massively high.”
The inspector had apologised.
“He was just doing his job,” Husband said.
“He said, ‘What can I help you with?’ and I said ‘If you want to do something constructive, help me load the truck’.”
Husband’s advice to dairy company bosses is that little things are appreciated and they need do little more than send a basket of fruit or something. But send out the local guy, not the dairy inspector, to sympathetically remind the farmer of the protocols to be followed with the milk.
“And just keep in mind to avoid hassles in a stressful situation.”
Husband does not question the need for strict protocols regarding the herd and the milk. But from his perspective at that time, he was being subjected to coercion and enforcement.
“You are being regulated totally,” he said.
“Your whole life is being taken away from you on that side of your world.
“Don’t get me wrong. I know it has to happen. But there’s ways and means of doing that.”
However he did acknowledge the many people whose help he had appreciated.
“LIC were fantastic,” he said.
“They gave us free KAMARS and Wendy Wilkie [an LIC field officer] rang me up all the time to see if I was okay.”
He hadn’t heard from the other semen company his farm business had used.
“You can’t really blame them for that, but they all knew about the disease,” Husband said.
If he was running their business and clients’ herds became TB-infected, he would give them a call.
Husband also lauded help given by staffers – the receptionist and others – at TBfree New Zealand’s Hamilton office. They turned up with boxes of cakes they had baked, he said.
“You wouldn’t believe it – it was my birthday.
“And that’s all you need … you just need that ‘Hey, we’re thinking of you … we feel bloody terrible for you’ and all that.”
Jane Sinclair, a veterinarian, is another given high marks for the way she dealt with him. He rang her “screaming” and they would have tense conversations.
She had been really good and he described all the vets with whom he dealt as caring, nice people.
Federated Farmers and rural support schemes had offered help, too.
“But here’s the problem: you go into this bubble and you don’t want anyone to know you’re upset. You don’t want people to think you are needy.”
The farmer had to have a sense of complete confidence and confidentiality.
“You need to know the world’s not going to know about it,” said Husband.
While TBfree New Zealand as an organisation had a job to do and was following its protocols, it could be cold and dispassionate, he said, but “not the locals”.
The national scheme was clinical and people involved should think more about the personal side of the farmer’s situation and involve a farmer who had experienced TB and come out the other side – a middle person – at the first meeting. It should be someone the TB-affected farmer could phone and talk to and someone who could intervene when demands to meet the rules were being imposed unreasonably.
“They may have that person now, because I have harped and harped about it.”
As for his future, Husband is getting out of dairying – at least for now.
“It has mentally destroyed me,” he said.
He will be moving elsewhere and, “I’m just going to relax for a year”.
He still has an interest – “a small one” – in dairying through the farm at Pukekohe. He will stick with his work with Federated Farmers – he is on the local, regional and national executive – and he will continue to serve as a regional councillor. He described his election and council work as timely.
“It has given me something to take my mind off the farm.”
Support and empathy on offer
Most bovine TB cases occur through no fault of the farmer.
But in some farming communities an unjustified stigma is attached to having TB, a spokesman for TBfree New Zealand said.
Its veterinary staff were highly experienced at providing accurate information and empathy to infected herd-owners.
“Along with TBfree NZ staff, they can help herd-owners discuss the situation with their neighbours as soon as possible to explain processes and risks,” the spokesman said.
“This is often done through a dairy meeting, where TBfree NZ staff, and other organisations, can explain the situation to neighbouring herd-owners and support the affected farmer.
“We can also put the herd-owner in contact with an appropriate farm consultant who can provide advice to help them through the course of the herd infection. We are constantly reviewing cases of herd infections and feedback from the affected farmers to maintain high levels of support.”
Other avenues include local rural support trusts, which help farmers cope with adverse events, such as a bovine TB infection.
The trusts work closely with affected herd-owners to meet and overcome any challenges. Their services are free and confidential but they are taken up at the farmer’s behest.
TBfree New Zealand has a network of 15 regional committees, made up of farmer volunteers, who have nearly all had a personal experience with TB.
“Committee members understand what a herd-owner is going through in this situation and are more than happy to meet with the farmer and discuss their concerns or organise local meetings,” the spokesman said.
Fonterra plays a role, too. When one of the co-op’s farmers discovers TB in the herd, the company will:
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Follow farmers through the mandatory response process to help ensure they achieve the best outcome.
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Manage any food safety or quality risk by ensuring the milk is withheld from supply.
Other farming organisations, such as Federated Farmers, DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb, have the capability to support farmers.
Prison officer and fireman
Waihou dairy farmer Stuart Husband successfully stood for election to the Waikato Regional Council as a member of the Rates Control team last November. He was sure his life experience helped him to make rounded decisions as he’s worked as a prison officer, a fireman and a dairy farmer whose business was shattered by bovine TB.
Husband, 46, was brought up in Ellerslie but said he always wanted to go farming as he would stay on his father’s cousins’ dairy farms at Hawera during school holidays.
On leaving St Peters College he went straight into a Federated Farmers cadet scheme – “much to my parents’ displeasure”. His first placement was a two-year stint on a dairy farm in Tuakau milking Jersey cows before he moved to another farm where he finished his cadetship.
His CV included a series of jobs as a farm labourer, including work on a farm in Drury milking 80 cows for town supply. He was managing a sheep and beef farm in the Gisborne area in 1993 when he decided to quit farming.
“There was no clear pathway for me at that stage,” he said.
Mustering sheep made way for mustering jail inmates: he joined the prison service at Mt Eden but in 1996 he was stabbed by prisoner “and that took away my interest in prisons”.
His interest in dairy farming was reinvigorated while doing ACC alternative work and working on a dairy farm on Paeroa. For personal reasons he returned to Auckland, initially going back into the prison service but in 1999 he joined the Fire Service and became a fireman based in Gisborne. He spent a year there, working on a dairy farm on his days off, then transferred back to Auckland in 2001. He supplemented his income by taking on a contract milking job in 2003.
In 2005 he bought 150 cows and took on a 50:50 sharemilking job at Waiuku, south of Auckland. Two years later he was offered a bigger dairying opportunity in Te Aroha and had to make a key decision: stay in the Fire Service or take farming seriously. Serious farming won the day.
In April 2007 the Husband family moved to Waihou to milk about 400 cows and what started as a 50:50 sharemilking operation later became a partnership with the land owner’s son, David Cooper. They leased a farm at Waihou and another at Pukekohe.
“And the rest is history, as they say,” Husband said wryly while describing his experience with bovine TB.
