Jeremy Clarkson has revealed that he is “not enjoying” farming at the moment after announcing there is a bovine tuberculosis (bTB) case on his farm. On Thursday, the television personality disclosed that his Cotswolds farm Diddly Squat, which is the subject of his Prime Video show Clarkson’s Farm, has been afflicted by a TB outbreak. He posted on X: “Bad news from Diddly Squat. We’ve gone down with TB. Everyone here is absolutely devastated.”

Now the 65-year-old has gone into further detail, discussing how it has been “bloody awful” dealing with the outbreak. “The disruption’s enormous, because you aren’t allowed to operate as a business,” he said. “You have to isolate them for two months. So all the barns we needed to store the grain in, we now have to convert into a cow hospital. We’ve got another calf with pneumonia, so that needs to be housed.”

“And we can’t buy or sell a cow now because the farm officially, you know, has TB,” he wrote in his column for The Times.

He also spoke to radio presenter Peter Cardwell about the situation. “We’re now locked down and it’s just dreadful, absolutely dreadful,” he said.

“It’s only been not even 24 hours since I found out, and it occupies my mind. Well, it was occupying my mind, but I got up this morning and found one of my puppies has died.

“And we’ve got a very sickly calf. Honestly, farming? I’m not enjoying it this week.”

According to the UK Government website, Bovine TB is “caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium bovis, (M. bovis) which is closely related to the bacterium that causes human and avian tuberculosis. “

All mammalian species, including humans, are susceptible to bovine TB. It is mainly a respiratory disease.

While the farm is struggling through this difficult time, it is business as usual for Jeremy’s Diddly Squat shop.

Staff took to Instagram to update visitors that fresh strawberries are now available in store.

Alongside a video of people picking the popular fruit, they wrote: “Hand-picked Strawberries, grown on the farm, available at Diddly Squat Farm Shop.”