Hot weather for farmers has been 'insane'

A dairy farmer in the south-west of England has said recent hot weather means she has had to keep her cows inside a shed during the day.

Kate Hoare, from Tideford, Cornwall, said there was not a lot of moisture in the ground, which had impacted the grass.

She said the warm weather was beautiful but had reached "a point where the heat got rather extreme and things started to struggle".

Ms Hoare told BBC Radio Cornwall the warm weather had impacted milk yield as cows were putting more energy into trying to cool down rather than producing milk. "A cow's ideal temperature is about 5C [41F], we've been up to 33C [91F], it's insane," she said.

"I'm actually just putting cows out now for a couple of hours.

"They'll go out and graze what grass is there and then they'll come in by sort of 10 o'clock, and then they'll spend the rest of the day in the shed."

Jo and Derek Jenkin brought their cattle to the Liskeard Show on Saturday, as well as the Stithians Show on Monday.

Mr Jenkin told the BBC: "It's not affected us down here too badly.

"I think it's affected farmers up the country more. We've had a bit of rain that kept the grass growing and we've done a good lot of silage."

Michelle Burley-Hodge also attended Stithians Show with her Mangalitsa pigs, which she has had in Cornwall for 17 years.

"The Mangalitsas, these ones are out all year round and we tend to have a lot of wallow," she said.

"So we just dig a big patch of earth up, fill it with water and just keep it submerged in water all the time and they can get themselves in it.

"It works as a sun cream and they keep themselves cooled off."

James Moon, a sheep farmer from Liskeard, said: "The hills are quite burned up.

"We've been lucky we've just had these odd showers overnight and this morning to keep some moisture in it.

"I think it's a matter of trying to alleviate that. Maybe digging a few ponds out and collecting a bit more water in the winter."

On Monday, the Met Office warned the UK was breaking heat and rainfall records increasingly frequently as its climate continued to warm.

The country's changing weather patterns mean the UK now experiences a "notably different" climate to what it was just a few decades ago, its State of the UK Climate report said.

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