Schmallenberg sounds like a small town in the American Midwest, rather than a sheep disease spread by the dreaded midge.

Blue tongue is somethings you get when you eat too many blue Smarties, which subsequently gives you the heebie jeebies.

But sheep scab does what it says on the tin. It is a horrible, debilitating and hugely stressful disease which does massive economic harm, notwithstanding the misery it causes to the animals that suffer from it.

So, it is quite incredulous that the NSA reckons that 10-15% of the national flock will be suffering from it at this and every moment. Add in the fact that sheep have never been more valuable, then it is hard to stomach that this remains a perennial problem for the sheep industry. Why not protect a valuable asset?

I get that no-one wants to admit the fact that they have it in their flocks. But it’s a bit like being an alcoholic … you cannot begin to recover from it until you admit to yourself that you have a problem. It’s a big issue, so get over it and help get rid of this scourge.

I’ve seen it in our own flock back in the day and it cost a lot of money back then to get rid of … and that was when sheep were worth ‘two rows of sheep s***e’. Given the money that’s swilling about in the sheep industry at the moment, it’s not the financial hardship that it once was to get a handle on it.

Good on NSA and Moredun to set about tackling this problem in Lewis and Harris (see elsewhere in this issue) and it is beholden on every sheep farmer to use the lessons learned there to the benefit of the national flock.

A co-ordinated programme is the ideal and it seems to have worked on those islands, but how to make it work in areas where some neighbours might not actually see eye to eye? Is there a role here for local SRUC/NFUS/NSA to act as the catalyst for implementing an achievable scheme? Someone needs to knock some heads together or the animal welfarists are going to make mischief while the scab remains an ever-present problem.

Going back to the tremendous sheep trade we have been experiencing for nigh on two years now, it is great to see that the stratification of our industry sees money going both downhill and back up the hill to primary producers.

I was one of the Private Fraser ‘doomsayers’ when the Brexit wall came down and, like many, feared the worst for a sector that was so dependent on exports. To say the way the sheep trade has continued on its meteoric rise since that seismic vote defies all predictions is a gross understatement and I haven’t yet got my head around it.

But it would appear that the law of unintended consequences has been at its most obtuse – and good on it for being so.

Moving to cattle, I thought that Claire Simonetta’s analysis of the paralysis in the implementation of ‘the way forward’ for the beef industry from politicians and civil servants was spot on and subsequently underlined by Jim Walker in this column.

I’m not wishing to cover the same ground, but only to point out that the inaction they have so eloquently alluded to has achieved exactly what it set out to accomplish – a reduction in the national herd. It is so sad that a pretty dramatic decrease in cow numbers has been driven by a lack of long-term confidence brought on by political ennui.

Wouldn’t it be great, for once, to hear from the Scottish Government what a great asset this country has in its beef industry and set about implementing a credible roadmap to prosperity, instead of presiding over a careless approach to achieving something that to many people has no tangible benefits for either the environment or the economy?

After the spanking that the SNP got at the recent General Election, its leader John Swinney promised that building the economy would be at the forefront of political drive from Holyrood. The loss of the majority of the jobs at the Ineos refinery in Grangemouth and its lacklustre approach to agriculture hardly makes that argument stand up.

Nobody in government seems to be facing up to the fact that we will be using oil for some time to come, even with the best intentions of going green, and that the ‘big’ industry in Scotland, agriculture, is another element of the economy that needs careful nurturing.

And, until the last couple of weeks, it looked like the weather had dealt us another bad hand. What a saviour a bit of sunshine has been and it looks like the harvest is almost home without serious injury, or severely added drying costs, which might help balance the books due to some poor yields.

The Fletch is heading off now to the wilds of Knoydart for the annual ‘fishing trip’ with the boys where the most will be made of the wonderful produce that we have in this great wee country. Local seafood has been sourced, the pick-up has been crammed with every possible meat product you can imagine, and there may even be some liquid refreshments to celebrate a catch or two … or more likely to commiserate an unproductive day brought on by a lack of effort!

Still, it’s nice to be able to say that we are all committed conservation anglers due to the fact that not much fishing actually takes place. As for the Schmallenberg midges – hopefully they will not have reached this far north and, in any case, they’ll be up against the feared west coast version of the little blighters, which is another reason to take shelter during the early morning and evenings!