Wentworth Castle: Unique opportunity to handfeed deer in the parkland

Yorkshire Post

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.

Transcript

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.

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