If you're a cow cockie in God's Own you could be forgiven for feeling under siege at the moment.
You've battled your way through several seasons of poor returns, The Beehive's been waving the stick at you for having too many cattle on your property with an inherent threat of cutting the size of the herd to protect our waterways and now you're battling disease.
Even though Mycoplasma bovis arrived here in July last year it seems to have been pretty well contained in South Canterbury and North Otago up until recent months.
This morning Jacinda Ardern's in the Waikato where she'll be talking to farmers about the scourge which has now hit the country's premier dairying province.
There's been a lot of finger pointing over the spread of the disease with Labour blaming National's inadequate cattle movement data system and with National accusing Labour of not taking the threat seriously enough and wasting cattle by destroying and burying them rather than putting them into the food chain.