They have lived through foot-and-mouth, the BSE crisis and TB, but after more than 100 years of dairy farming the Teece family are giving up, Sarah Probert discovers...

It was a sad day for Andrew Teece. He watched his entire dairy herd being driven away from his Shropshire farm after generations of milk production.

Every Friesian had been born at his farm near Shrewsbury, run by his family since 1896.

But it was not foot-and-mouth or TB which had defeated the 42-year-old after many years in the dairy industry. It was the consistently poor milk prices which had finally driven them to give up the business.

"It is bad milk prices, getting a bad back and the fact that my dad is nearly 70. I never see my children and I work seven days a week and at the end of the day I have to take into account that I am not making any money," Mr Teece explained.

" It is very emotional because I am attached to the cows and certainly attached to the land so to see someone else's cattle on our fields makes me realise how attached I feel to the place."

Mr Teece auctioned off his 181 Holstein Friesian cattle this month, but has kept a few on for sentimental reasons.

Haughmond Farm was built in 1800 after buildings from the nearby 12th century Haughmond Abbey were moved to the site. In 1896, Mr Teece's great grandfather began farming on the site and the business was gradually passed through the family.

They recently held a party to celebrate their 100 years of farming on the land, but now the 188-acre site will be used for a different purpose.

"We now rent our land to other farmers and we are also making a business out of storing caravans. We have permission to store 160 caravans and we also have a small caravan site," Mr Teece said.

"We don't want to push our luck anymore. We passed a TB test recently, we only had one cow with BSE in 1996, then there was foot-and-mouth. We were very lucky because we were particularly close to it."

He added: "We are not giving up because we don't enjoy it. A lot of people keep saying it is because of my bad back but if I was making a profit I could have two people working for me. I have one man but I can't afford to pay him overtime." The historic farm has a bridle path running through it which was once the main route for cattle travelling to market.

David Giles, director of Halls the auctioneers in charge of the sale, said the closure of dairy farms was becoming a regular occurrence.

He added: "The smaller family farms have been driven out in favour of the larger farms and it is milk prices every time. They work damn hard and long hours when there is little or no profit.

"It is a hard way of life, I don't think anybody minds working hard so long as they are getting a reasonable payment for it."

Mr Giles said there was a high demand for cattle as an exodus of small farmers had meant a decline in cattle breeding.

"There is a lot of interest and there were people from all over the country at the sale.

"Because there are less people in jobs less cows are being bred so those still in the industry are in need of replacements and replacements are getting harder to find."