Death threats over Welsh hill farmer’s lamb adoption video

Welsh hill farmer Gareth Wyn Jones has received death threats after posting a video on social media showing a traditional lamb adoption.

Mr Wyn Jones, who farms in Llanfairfechan, North Wales, uploaded the video on his Facebook page on 12 April showing him skinning a dead lamb and putting the skin on another lamb to help with adoption.

The farmer said the “warts and all” video, which has now been viewed more than 500,000 times, created a lot of interest and was well received by most people, but some took exception.

See also: How to deal with animal activists and difficult neighbours

A man from the Netherlands appears to have mistaken the dead lamb’s skin for a puppy.

He sent Mr Wyn Jones three abusive telephone voice messages threatening violence and a stream of text messages containing obscenities.

One message tells the farmer he will “come and cut your throat” and another threatens to “kill you the same way you kill that poor puppy”.

Another man sent him a message on Facebook branding him as a “sick c*** cutting up animals, adding: “I’ll cut you up you f****** sick b******.”

Mr Wyn Jones, a married father of three, has 250,000 followers across social media. He said the death threats were “totally unacceptable” and he has reported them to North Wales Police.

A force spokesman said: “We are aware of the incident and the matter is being investigated.”

Update on the death threat last night . Spoken with @NWPolice @northwaleslive about the situation. pic.twitter.com/thoqKRgO8w

— Gareth Wyn Jones (@1GarethWynJones) April 17, 2023

He told Farmers Weekly: “It was an honest tale of what we do to adopt a lamb and was nothing different to what I do every single day during the lambing season.

“It went from a positive story to people from overseas thinking it was not a lamb, with all kinds of misinformation, instead of people sitting down and watching the video properly.”

He added that he felt disappointed that a small minority of people from within the industry had accused him of stirring up hate, but he was grateful for the support given to him by NFU Cymru.