“I can say it to you because you’re a woman, but I cried my eyes out when we got the results. No one talks about the emotional side of TB. It crucified us financially and emotionally for three years.”

These were the words of Wicklow farmer Fiona Condren five years on from going down with TB.

It had been 30 years since Fiona and her father Ben had a TB outbreak on their farm in Moneygarrow, near Arklow. However, a herd test in October 2020 uncovered 12 reactors in their 100-cow strong herd. They showed up with lumps “the size of your fist”, the 36-year-old told the Irish Farmers Journal.

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Eight of these cows showed up with lesions in the factory. A blood test was carried out and 58 tested positive for TB. She said none had lesions when slaughtered. Condren believes some of these were false positives and criticised the efficacy of the blood test.

Compensation

Condren explained her reactor cows made an average of €1,250 a piece when valued. However, this was not nearly enough to buy back in stock at the time.

“So 58 cows left the herd and I was only able to afford to buy back 27 cows with the compensation money I got.

“I ended up buying back fourth, fifth and sixth lactation cows at €2,000 and €2,200 a piece.

“The compensation is just not enough, they value the cow as a suckler cow. With dairy cows you don’t have them fat unless you’re pumping them with meal.

“Weirdly enough they were all young cows that went down on me. All the older ones were left there.

“It was bizarre because my herd is a closed herd, the only thing I buy is a bull,” she said.

Shed space

Naturally, as calving commenced shed space for bull calves became a serious issue for Condren. However, after three clear two-month tests, calves could move again from April.

“Having to keep the calves absolutely crippled us both in terms of space and cost. For weaned calves you were only getting €150 or €100 for your Friesian bulls,” she said.

It took Condren three years to build back up her herd and overcome the financial strain of the breakdown.

In 2021, Condren said that production-wise, she was back 130,800l of milk which was a loss of €50,000 at the time.

“By the end of 2021 I had a merchant’s debt of €82,000. “It took until 2025 to be completely back to feeling comfortable. It wasn’t until then that we felt confident to reinvest into the farm and stock again,” she said.

Department figures

Last year finished up with approximately 37,600 reactors in Ireland, 1,886 of these were in Wicklow.

The number of herds nationwide locked up with TB as of Monday 19 January has fallen by over 6.5% from 6,102 herds to 5,701 herds when compared with last year. While trends are currently moving in the right direction, superintending veterinary inspector at the Department of Agriculture Damien Barrett has said that numbers are still too high.

The TB action plan is set to come into play on 1 April 2026 enforcing new rules in the Department’s latest drive to curtail the infectious disease.