Meet Barry - the pig who doesn't like water
Great Shefford's National Animal Welfare Trust (NAWT) shelter launches fundraising drive after site floods
MEET Barry - a porker so picky that he can’t stand water.
And that’s no joke when your field is flooded.
Barry, a small Kunekune crossbreed, is being cared for at the National Animal Welfare Trust (NAWT) rehoming centre in Great Shefford, where manager Tracy Waldron said: “Trust us to have the only pig in the world who just can’t stand water.”
He is so fastidious that he won’t walk through puddles and when staff tried to cool him down with a hose during a heatwave last summer, he “squealed the place down.”
But the four-year-old’s foibles means he has become the perfect poster boy for a NAWT campaign to raise £5,000 for vital ditch-digging.
For the centre at Trindledown Farm is once more suffering from severe flooding.
Ms Waldron said: "Trindledown receives the overflow of water from higher farmland which runs through half our grazing fields. Our other animals have been moved to higher ground.
But Barry is not a good mixer, apparently.
The charity was previously flooded in 1997, 2013 and 2014.
In recent weeks NAWT has had to pay a drainage company a total of £1,800 for several visits, at a time when the charity is struggling to maintain its centres.
The charity said in a statement: “The flood is making exercising the dogs impossibly hard. The higher fields are taken up by our field animals, with nowhere to rotate them to. The drowned grass just wont recover for feeding this year. It’s putting a real strain on us financially. The last time the centre flooded we were forced to close to the public in 2013 and 2014. We simply cannot afford the centre to be inaccessible to our supporters, volunteers and, especially, our animal care team.
“But there is hope! Going forward, new ditches are needed along the boundary of Trindledown Farm to redirect the flow and to prevent future floods, with the potential fix costing £5,000.”
The statement added: “We feel positive that our community will get behind us. If each and every supporter donated just £2 we could ease the flood, keep the centre open – and, most importantly, keep Barry dry!”
