Duchess of Cambridge feeds Stinky the sheep on inner-city farm visit

1/16
Tom Powell3 May 2017

The Duchess of Cambridge dropped in on an inner-city farm today, where she fed milk to a lamb named Stinky.

Kate met Stinky during a visit to the Farms for City Children in Arlingham, Gloucestershire - a charity set up by children's author Michael Morpurgo to teach inner-city children about farming.

Stinky, who is six weeks old, is being bottle-fed as he fell ill shortly after being born and had to be taken away from his mother and hand-reared by staff.

Farm manager John Goodman explained how Stinky - a Lleyn breed of sheep who was born on the farm - earned his name.

Kate meets Stinky during a visit to the Farms for City Children in Arlingham 
Matt Cardy/Getty Images

"He got a bit of a stomach infection and he had diarrhoea and he was a bit smelly. The children said he was stinky and the name stuck," he said.

"We had to take him away from his mother and siblings and bottle-feed him and the children were not allowed to touch him.

"It's too late to return him to his mother so he will be bottle-fed. He has got back to full health now.

"Stinky is a twin and his brother and sister are still with their mother."

Kate helped herd pigs at one point during the visit (Richard Pohle/The Times/PA )
Richard Pohle/The Times/PA

Mr Goodman added: "He's destined to be eaten - the kids will be horrified."

The Duchess, who was wearing dark brown knee-length zip-up boots, light brown trousers and an outdoor jacket, had arrived at the farm for a private lunch with the children and staff.

She then joined a story-time session led by Mr Morpurgo, who founded the charity with his wife Clare in 1976.

The Duchess was then taken on a tour of the farm where she helped children - from Vauxhall in London - pot vegetable plants and plant onions in the allotments, as well as tending to the chicken coop.

The Duchess's visit was rounded off with a short tea party
Ben Birchall/PA

While helping to plant the onions, the Duchess asked: "Do any of you like onions?"

One child replied that they made their eyes water and the Duchess replied: "They make things nice and tasty. You can put onions in curries."

She also saw a "super wriggly worm" and asked the children: "Have all of you held a worm before?"

The Duchess then tried her hand at 'pig weighing' - which involves corralling a pig into a pen to be weighed.

"We use pig boards to coral or drive the pigs into the crate to weigh them," Mr Goodman said.

"The Duchess had a pig board and was brilliant with it. She said she had never done pig weighing before.

"The expression is 'stubborn as a mule' and pigs can be just as bad. We made sure we had three really quiet ones."

The Duchess's visit was rounded off with a short tea party.

Speaking afterwards, Mr Goodman said: "It's been good fun. The Duchess is really hands on and really good fun and brilliant with the children - she has a rapport with them."

The organisation, which now has three working farms, welcomes around 3,200 children and 400 teachers a year.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in