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The latest running joke on the farm is: “How is a lamb as strong as a buffalo?” The answer: “Because both can carry the foot-and-mouth virus without showing symptoms”.
Continuing our grim humour, my staff are also complaining that foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is terrible, as they can’t buy sheep heads or trotters from our FMD-designated abattoir anymore.
So we make jokes, because what else can one do against the devastation caused by outdated FMD control policies and those lining up to profit from farmers’ misery?
Top dog in the bakkie kennel
Maintaining a sense of humour doesn’t seem to be the philosophy Down Under, where Australia’s Ad Standards Community Panel recently ruled that an ironic Hilux advertisement was not funny, since it may cause people to break the law.
The big sin committed in the Hilux advertisement, according to the panel, was to show an obviously fake heap of happy dogs piled high in the load bin, which the panel members said broke the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries’ advertising rules.
The panel ruled that the advertisement “portrayed driving practices or actions which, if they were to take place on a road or road related area, might breach a related law”; and the advertisement “depicted behaviour that was contrary to community standards on animal safety”.
As always happens with censors, their ruling made the news and caused even more people, also outside Australia, to watch the ad. As someone who ordered a new Hilux, I was one of those watchers and I found the ad to be as funny as Toyota intended. The humourless bureaucrats, however, failed to see the joke made by the top dog in the bakkie kennel.
Winds of change
In South Africa, this joke is seen in the problems plaguing some of our government departments. But there is hope for all honest citizens, as is best demonstrated by the global winds of change that are exposing failing officials.
South Africa’s recently announced national vaccination drive forms part of this wind. In 2021 Brazil showed that everyone must pull together to inject and vaccinate the national herd so that it can become FMB free. In South Africa, I predict that the hard work this process demands will soon expose those officials who are unable to perform the job, while uniting farmers at all levels in South Africa.
Mbali, our very efficient office administrator who sees herself as the real boss of our farm, has no patience with my grand political ruminations. She instead tells me to focus on making money with my ruminants. She is right, as usual. Most of our ewes will soon be gathered in the lambing pens, where we will monitor them for any blisters on their feet, tongues, and elsewhere inside their mouths.
Traditional immune boosters
So far none of my free range or feedlot flocks have shown any FMD blisters. For this I thank their regular nibbling of chicory and sheep sorrel that grow wild all over the farm, including along the feedlot fence.
Granddad started sowing these plants after he returned from Egypt, where he served during the Second World War. His generation swore by the health-boosting properties of chicory and sorrel and 75 years later, I’ve found no reason to stop the tradition. In fact, several studies provide scientific explanations that back granddad’s observations of shiny coats and bright eyes in grazers that nibble on chicory and sorrel.
Which is why we make sure to water these plants in winter and divide new growths in spring to ensure a good supply of wild growth all year round. The sheep self-medicate on these plants on their own, barely nibbling the leaves fast enough to slow the plant’s growth.
If only all my fellow farmers with dairies and feedlots could shrug off this FMD epidemic so lightly!
