DISASTER has struck a second time for a Tavistock farmer already devastated by the foot and mouth crisis.

Alan Viggers lost all of his livestock — 1,200 sheep and 110 cattle — back in March after a small flock grazing at Gulworthy was found showing signs of the virulent disease.

And on Monday a blaze ripped through his barn at Chillaton, destroying his entire stock of hay — recently harvested from acres of ungrazed pasture.

'It's knocked me sideways again,' admitted Mr Viggers.

'We can't keep any livestock, so we'd cut nearly all the farm for hay, and we were lucky we'd had that spell of fine weather to do it in — you've got to make some use of it. You have to keep looking forward.'

Mr Viggers was looking forward to restocking in the autumn. The plan was to start on a small scale because of the uncertain state of British farming, and, perhaps, build back up to previous levels over the next five or more years.

'I shall still go on, but how many knocks can you take?' he said. 'It doesn't come easy, it was a hell of a shock to the system. How much bad luck can you have? Two big major things so far this year and it's only July.

'We will clean it up, rebuild it and start again, making the best of it,' he said.

It is rather ironic that Mr Viggers feels his animals need never have been slaughtered.

'All the tests were shown to be negative. The sheep had orf, a disease with similar symptoms to foot and mouth, well that's my version of it, you'll never get MAFF, or DEFRA as it now is, to admit that,' he said.

Tavistock fire chief Chris Neale said they were called to the fire at around 5.45 on Monday morning.

'We found the barn — which was big, some 30m by 40m — was about half full of hay bales, which were well alight,' he said.

Two more appliances were called from Launceston to help the two Tavistock machines, along with a water tanker.

'Most of the hay was destroyed by the fire,' he said. 'Our concern was the barn and apart from about half of the roof, we managed to save the building.'

Later in the day, tired Tavistock and Launceston crews were relieved by fresh teams from Yelverton, Bere Alston and Okehampton, who stayed until 8pm finishing the job.

Mr Neale said the fire was not suspicious but they were still investigating its cause.