Drover training day certainly opened my eyes

This is a training day where we touch on matters such as animal welfare and safety and human welfare and safety.

We also look at subjects such as how animals hear and see. If you can understand how they work, it gives us a better understanding of how to handle them when they enter our livestock markets.

We also looked a subjects such as sheep scab, lameness, signs of other illness and matters that we may see from time to time and how to deal with them.

All in all that part of the course was very interesting and informative.

A new fact to me was that if a cow stubs her horn on a lorry or pen the best way to deal with it is to put a cobweb on it to congeal the bleeding – thanks Mr Uffold for that one.

We then had a very interesting talk on meat quality from Liz Ford of Eblex.

She talked about how handling from farm, transport and markets and abattoirs can affect the meat quality – facts such as when handling lambs, to never pull on their wool, to stick treatment, and stress, which causes black meat in beef cuts.

Again very important information for our staff in markets.

Now to my favourite part of the day – the agricultural chaplain for the border area, David Gwatkin.

An excellent speaker and caring kind of chap who often visits our livestock markets as a point of meeting farmers and maybe spotting that first signs of stress or depression or just giving a hand to a member of our local community.

He pointed out to us all how important the role our livestock markets is to all generations of farmers and the local community, especially in times of need such as when we were hit with the snow last winter.

Collections centres and selling direct to abattoirs does not provide that constant contact and community spirit that livestock markets provide.

We should all remember that. We are not only open 52 weeks of the year to sell your livestock at the best price achievable that week, but also provide a constant support centre especially, to those who are vulnerable.

As auctioneers and staff we enjoy our weekly interaction with our clients and long may this continue.

David was followed by a session on anger management – a subject that we also have to deal with sometimes. Very interesting and I shall be putting this into practice soon.

We then had a very relevant talk from Euro Quality Meats on the halal slaughter of beef and sheep and the differences between halal kill and kosher kill. The halal sector is a constant purchaser from many livestock markets and we should not forget that.

A day well spent by all of our drovers to continue McCartneys' professional development of all our staff.

* Jenny Layton Mills of McCartneys, partner at Knighton Market