Members of the public took part in a deer experience at Wentworth Castle at the weekend where they were abyle to handfeed deer.
This is a unique opportunity to enjoy early morning in the parkland before everyone else arrived on site takes place only a few times a year. Matt Watson, area ranger at National Trust Wentworth Castle, talks about the morning.
This is a unique opportunity to enjoy early morning in the parkland before everyone else arrived on site takes place only a few times a year. Matt Watson, area ranger at National Trust Wentworth Castle, talks about the morning.
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00:00I'm Matt Watson, I'm Area Ranger here at National Trust Wentworth Castle Gardens and we've just
00:08finished a Meet the Deer, Feed the Deer morning event. It's the second year we've run this,
00:13this is the second one of 2024 and there's one next Friday, Saturday. It's the second
00:20year we've run this and where families, children can come and meet the red deer herd. It's
00:26just finished, it went well, everyone got to feed, hand feed the deer with nuts. The
00:32deer behaved themselves, it was a really nice event and we're looking forward to bringing
00:36them in the coming years. It quickly gets booked up, as soon as it goes live on the
00:40website it does really get quickly booked up so if anyone wants to come to next year's
00:45event just keep an eye on the National Trust website for Wentworth Castle Gardens and come
00:49to us and enjoy yourselves, thank you. It's only three Friday, Saturdays per year, we
00:54don't want the deer getting used to being around people and getting used to the areas
00:58where if I come here I'm going to get fed every morning because they are wild animals,
01:02we still want them to be wild but obviously in this environment we are able to do it,
01:07manage it safely and Terry, the deer manager, he's always there to keep control, give advice
01:13on to the people of how to interact with the deer safely at all times because that's paramount
01:19but yeah it goes really, really well and everyone has that experience and especially around
01:22Christmas time, they're not reindeer but people like to think that and it looks really nice
01:27for them. We've got about a head of 70 red deer that are managed and farmed but we also
01:31have a smaller herd of fallow deer which are more ornamental but they just keep themselves
01:36to themselves, they're not farmed, they just keep themselves alone, they do interact with
01:41the red deer but yeah they don't come to this part of the event really, they just lie low
01:47and keep themselves and just eat the grass, they don't come to feed on the nuts when we're
01:50doing this event.