Kate feeds Stinky the sheep during visit to childrenâs farm
The Duchess of Cambridge was visiting the Farms for City Children charity set up by childrenâs author Michael Morpurgo.
A baby lamb called Stinky had a very special visitor giving him a bottle of milk – the Duchess of Cambridge.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
