Spare a thought for the cows – and us – as clocks go back

This summer, the fleeting periods of sunshine and often chilly temperatures had everyone at it. The sun would appear for long enough to remind us of its existence before disappearing behind another grey cloud swollen with rain.

We entered the autumn without that full charge of sunshine and in just a few days’ time the daylight hours will be shorter too.

On Sunday 27th October, darkness will fall an hour earlier when the clocks are turned back and we revert to Greenwich Mean Time, and that means winter is on its way.

The UK will go into its traditional five-month hibernation, but work in the countryside continues.

Although harvest is a distant memory, many farmers are still busy cultivating, drilling and rolling after some very wet conditions in September delayed those jobs.

For dairy and livestock farmers the workload continues all year round, come rain or shine, daylight or darkness.

Farming can be a relentless and high pressure occupation, exacerbated by the environment in which the job occurs, including longer hours of darkness accompanied by colder and wetter weather in the winter.

As the season shifts and the days shorten, increased hours of darkness can create both physical and mental hazards for farmers.

The physical challenges need no explaining but working long hours and in dark conditions can impact on mental health too.

But does it have to be like this? Why don’t be maintain British Summer Time and have a little less light at the start of the day in the winter and a little more in the early evening?

The last time the NFU tested opinion among its farming membership a narrow majority favoured lighter evenings.

But the system looks set to stay, for now at least, so as we move from the upbeat-sounding British Summer Time, spare a thought for our dairy cows next week and their confusion in those first few days when milking times are an hour later as, in my experience, cows always ignore clocks.