John Holman welcomes you to Edition 31 of Farm Radio. 
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Click on the signpost to find your way to "Chalk and Cheese" and "Levels and Moors" items.
|  Joep Driessen is a Dutch vet who chose Dorset to kick off a UK-wide tour promoting a book called “Cow Signals” wherein farmers are taught not just to watch their cows but to observe them making both the farmer’s and the cow’s life a lot healthier and productive. Geoff Pagotto talks to Joep to find out more.
If you have read this book or any other books on agricultural subjects and would like to record a review for Farm Radio, please get in touch. We would be very pleased to hear from you. Contact: www.vetvice.com |
 As you’d expect there were plenty of amazing machines on display at the Grasslands UK day. However, a new departure this year was to have short 20 minute seminars which were organised by the British Grassland Society. Roger Crisp spoke to Piers Badnell, one of the speakers, and to Rachel Hann who was responsible for organising the Grassland UK event.
Contact: Bath and West Showground 01749 822200 www.bathandwest.com Piers Badnell, MDC. 01989 740562 www.mdc.org.uk |  Dr. Andrew Bradley is at Bristol Vet College specialising in mastitis and for the last decade has been a familiar face amongst the farmers on the Mendips who have helped with his research. Here Geoff Pagotto explores Andrew’s latest thoughts on this painful and costly disease.
For a previous item with Dr. Bradley, please see Farm Radio Edition 14. |  It can be very advantageous for farmers to to get used to the idea of finding local markets for their products. Louise Blair-Daniels and Ed Sykes explain to Roger Crisp how they went about setting up their small, elegant hotel on the principle of using local suppliers in Newport, Pembrokeshire. Ed and Louise are both locals, Ed himself is also from a farming family and looks at the difference between his generation and his father’s.
Contact:01239 820008 (between 10.00am and 10.00pm) www.llysmeddyg.com |
 As well as being a poet, amongst other things, Catherine Simmonds from Halstock also has a rural enterprise producing eggs and growing herbs. Here is the second poem that she has recorded for Farm Radio.
If you know of a poet who writes on themes related to farming or the countryside who would be keen on recording a poem or poems for Farm Radio or, indeed, if you are one yourself please let us know. Alternatively, if you have a favourite poem about farming that you would like to hear on Farm Radio, simply get in touch and we will see what we can do. | | This brief video diary following the journey of a batch of calves from the north of England to their eventual end at an abattoir in Belgium has been contributed by Tom Levitt of "Farmers' Guardian" and shows, whatever you may feel about live animal exports, that it can be accomplished fairly humanely. See Tom's article on this at www.farmersguardian.com |
