SOS! Save our sheep
IT is a row that has left a primary school looking decidedly sheepish and split right down the middle.
Is Marcus their pet sheep headed for the chop or not?
Pupils have bottle-fed and watched him grow since he arrived as a lamb at the Lydd Primary School farm in Romney Marsh, Kent, three years ago.
But the school council – made up of children aged seven to 11, backed by their headmistress Andrea Charman – voted to have him slaughtered and his meat raffled to raise money to buy more animals.
The vote provoked a furious rumpus with a rival faction of children and parents launching an SOS – Save Our Sheep – protest.
Parents against the slaughter met Mrs Chapman yesterday to plead for a stay of execution but were unable to change her mind.
Comments on social networking website Facebook even suggested a rescue attempt should be launched to free Marcus – one of three sheep at the school farm.
That resulted in the school spiriting away Marcus to a secret location to prevent any rescue attempt.
Protest group leader Jo Davis, 30, whose eight-year-old daughter Megan is terribly upset, said: “I feel this is the same as my daughter coming home from school to find her pet rabbit bubbling away on the stove in a stew. She doesn’t need to be bottle-feeding him, petting him, growing attached to him and then he is slaughtered.
“We have had two animal sanctuaries offer to take him, as well as a farmer who has offered to give us one of his sheep instead.
“The suggestion on Facebook to break in and kidnap Marcus was a joke.”
Another parent, who did not wish to be named, said her daughter came home in tears after finding out about Marcus’s fate.
She said: “It’s awful. My daughter has hand-fed Marcus and learned to love him. It’s all very well for the likes of Jamie Oliver, but I don’t feel it’s suitable for kids to decide poor Marcus’s fate.
“And I don’t think it’s right that kids from the age of three witness the full horrors of farming life when they are so young.”
However Mrs Charman remained adamant that the children’s original decision had to be followed in order to help educate them about the food chain and the local economy. She said: “I am trying to prepare children for the adult world in every sense.”
But time is running out for the protesters and Marcus. It is understood that his slaughter is set to go ahead on Monday.
