Young offenders’ sheep-rearing skills were honoured at The Balmoral Show recently. Inmate students from a prison facility in Belfast won their first red rosette for their Bluefaced Leicester sheep.
Guided by Richard Graham, vocational training officer at Hydebank and part-time sheep farmer, they reared, fed and groomed the prize-winning Bluefaced Leicester sheep at Hydebank Wood College in Northern Ireland.
Graham launched the agri-initiative partly to provide animal therapy to the young offenders and partly to ease his own decade-long grass-cutting burden. The Hydebank gardens have vast amounts of grass, which it was his responsibility to cut. He motivated for sheep to graze it instead.
The facility bought four sheep in 2016. Now they have around 24.
This was the first time they showed the breed, and one of the young offenders was able to showcase them at the Balmoral event. He was out on bail for a driving transgression.
Graham, who has a farming background, said the initiative has been extremely successful. This year, the young men were able to lamb some of the ewes without his help.
The latest statistics show the annual cost of imprisonment in Northern Ireland is EUR 55,000. Graham says if one offender doesn’t reoffend within three consecutive years of conviction because they’ve learned how wonderful it is to work with animals, that’s a saving of EUR 165,000.