They are used to death in the country, but not death on the scale of the last few weeks when disease has ravaged the dairy lands of England. The number of animals slaughtered is too big to have meaning, the cost too great yet to be measured. But it is not just a financial loss; it is the loss of a life's work, the loss of animals that have almost become pets; the sending away of children: a pervasive air of despair that is the real cost.