FREE range egg producers Philip and Anne Caine are just two farmers whose business hangs in the balance following the heavy snowfall.
Mr and Mrs Caine, of Little London Farm, Michael, may have to cull the birds that survived the snow because they have stopped laying eggs due to shock.
And if that happens they can’t afford to re-stock.
Mr Caine said: ‘If they don’t come back to laying we’re going to have to pack up.’
They were unable to get into the hen sheds for a couple of days following the snowfall.
They lost more than 1,000 hens out of their total stock of 4,000.
Mr Caine said: ‘We couldn’t get them dried off and the cold set in to them.’
‘And there’s another 200 that we will have to cull because they’re looking pretty sorry for themselves.’
On top of that, he said the remaining hens were only laying eggs at a rate of 40 per cent.
‘We just live in hope they will come back up,’ he said.
Mr and Mrs Caine have had hens for just over two years, and in that time have invested £150,000.
They supply half of their eggs to Shoprite and the rest to small local retailers.
In last week’s Manx Independent, we reported that Helen Kermode of Hilltop Rise, Greeba mountain, was one of the many farmers grateful to the kindness of total strangers who had turned up to help dig out sheep and cattle buried in huge snow drifts.
One week on, there are still some 90 acres of land they haven’t been able to check because of the drifts and slow thaw.
When asked if she saw a future in farming, she said: ‘I doubt it with the sheep but I will keep on going with the cattle.’
She described the losses as being ‘too bleak’, particularly as following the weather warning she had moved her stock to lower land – which turned out to be hardest hit.
On Tuesday, she uncovered 20 dead lambs from one field, but said it was still too early to say how many she had lost in total.
Angela Kelly, who farms at Rhencullen, Kirk Michael, lost half her livestock when two shed roofs collapsed on top of them due to the weight of the snow.
She currently has calves in one of her neighbour’s sheds and is renting another shed for lambs.
‘The thing now is to look forward and hope we get over this,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what the future of farming is at the moment.
‘I personally don’t feel as though there’s a future in it.
‘But I’ve got a young up and coming farmer [her son Michael, aged 24] and we have to try and keep going for him.’
Mrs Kelly said: ‘There are no government grants to help us get the sheds.
‘It’s going to be insurance and if not, out of our own pocket again.’
She said: ‘It will take us years to lift out of this, if we do. I just hope it doesn’t happen again.’
There are still sheep on land at the top of Rhencullen that she has been unable to check.
And there are no green fields at all yet.
‘The sheep are just eating and eating snow as far as I can see,’ Mrs Kelly said.
She thanked members of the public for the ‘masses of help’ she had received.
Ray Green, aged 65, of Creg Lea Farm, in Dalby, said the weather conditions had been ‘horrendous’, but said he had fared much better than some farmers.
He farms up to 800 feet and his land includes Doarlish Cashen.
It was some eight days before he was able to get a tractor up to his stock.
So far, Mr Green has lost two of his 70 cows and six of his 180 sheep to the snow.
He said his main hope now was that his sheep – due to start lambing soon – didn’t abort them.