A sheep sanctuary in Burton Pedwardine near Sleaford are appealing to their community to help save their rare viking sheep.
Amanda and Barry Gray have been running their Gotland sheep sanctuary Manor farm cottage by themselves for the past 16 years, but recently the couple has faced challenges following the diagnosis of 74 year old Barry’s degenerative lung condition.
Once the farm looked after over 200 hundred rare Gotland sheep, the most in the UK, but had to cut down when they stopped farming them for meat.
“We used to take our sheep to slaughter and then we found we couldn’t take it anymore, we fell in love with them and we turned vegetarian.”
54 year old Amanda has struggled caring for both her husband and the many animals in her sanctuary, and whilst her carers allowance helps cover the costs of running the farm, she’s struggling to keep up with the growing workload and cost of maintenance.
“Barry’s not been able to take on as big a role has he did, he used to do all the land work and help me wrestle sheep when they needed to be clipped and sheared, Its just me now, I’ve been on my own for quite some time, and it actually got to the point I hospitalised myself one winter looking after them.”
It was after her injury that their neighbours started to pitch in helping out here and there, helping with odd jobs about the farm.
Barry was grateful:
“We’ve got so much support from our neighbours, they’re always on hand to help, we have some land over the road and whenever we move the sheep they always come out to help herd and stop traffic, they’re wonderful people.”
Reaching out to the Facebook group Sheep as pets for advice, Amanda made friends with Jill Treganza from Norfolk who set up an appeal page and suggested Amanda look deeper into the community for help.
The go fund me page: “Help Amanda’s sheep sanctuary” has been a massive success making over £700 in just under a month.