Livestock Checker Volunteers - December Update

Volunteer livestock checkers carried out over 1000 livestock checks in the last three months. 28 people applied to become livestock checkers in the last quarter with 18 being trained in October and November.  

Finding the cattle at South Blean has become much easier with the installation of ‘Digitanimal’ GPS trackers. There have been some initial issues with signal reliability but we are now ready to start rolling these out to help checkers at Old Park Hill and Dover Castle too.  

KWT has purchased lots of new animals too to make sure we can match the need of the sites over the winter. Ten new sheep have joined the flock at Dover castle, three goats went to Wouldham common, eight new White Faced Woodland sheep will be joining the weald flock alongside a ram so we can have lambs in the spring from this amazing breed. We also purchased three new Herdwick rams and a Hebridean ram for our other breeding flocks. Finally we bought a gorgeous Longhorn Bull to go to West Blean as part of the Wilder Blean project but he will be spending the winter at Broadham Down. 

The pigs at Nashenden have settled in really well and have started to do some rootling in the deeper soil areas. We are seeing the evidence from other disturbed ground work on the site and are very excited to see the results in terms of variety and timing of flowering. Well done to the volunteers on this site for getting involved in checking a very different type of conservation animal. 

Across the country livestock owners have been struggling with an increase in dog worrying and attacks. Unfortunately we have not been immune to this. In part caused by the increase in new dog ownership and in part by people finding more out of the way places they want to walk with their dogs. Many of the KWT leadership team joined up with the rural policing team at South Swale to discuss the most effective way forward in reducing the issue across the Estate. Issues discussed ranged from tech such as body cams and animal trackers, to social media campaigns, signage, infrastructure, training and increasing people presence on key sites.