An Irish farmer has decided to send 70 of his cows to an animal sanctuary in the UK, in order to save them from slaughter.

The farmer, who is believed to be based in the south of the country, wishes to remain anonymous.

With the help of Charlie’s Equine Rescue, it has been agreed that the 70 dairy cows will live out the rest of their days in the Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norwich – which was set up by Wendy Valentine.

On August 4, a GoFundMe page was set up in order to help raise the necessary funds to transport the animals to the sanctuary.

According to the fundraising page, this is a “working dairy herd of 70 cows who have all bonded over the years in their own unique ways”.

After years of service and providing an income, this farmer feels that they deserve a life where they can continue to live as a herd together.

At the time of writing the page had raised almost €2,500 of its €6,000 target, from about 140 individual donations. Any funds surplus to the requirements of this project are expected to go the Hillside Animal Sanctuary, to help with the future care of the animals.

If €6,000 is raised it will go towards the cost of transporting the animals, as well as relative fees. The herd will be sent in two lots; the first phase will see 45 cows transported, with the remaining 25 following soon thereafter.

The third phase of the project will also see any sheep and ponies on the farmer’s property sent over to the sanctuary.


The project has received the support of Sharon Shannon, a renowned Irish musician, who shared the story on her Facebook page recently.

Yesterday, I was honored to have met a truly amazing, humble and inspirational human being, who wishes to remain anonymous and not attract any attention or praise.

The noble and admirable decision to send these beautiful animals to a sanctuary (instead of selling them for slaughter or selling them to another farmer where it would be inevitable that they would eventually go to slaughter, or worse again the possibility of them becoming victims of live export) is an awakening example of how kindness and compassion and a tender heart has won over in a world full of greed. Huge, huge, huge gratitude to Wendy Valentine from Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norwich UK, and huge, huge, huge thanks to Joe Ahearne-Murphy from Charlie’s Equine Rescue and Catriona Lowry for co-ordinating this whole project and helping to save the lives of these cows and making this kind farmer’s wishes come true.

Please click on the link below to read more about this extraordinary and uplifting story and donate as little or as much as you can to help make the vision of this happy ending a reality. https://www.gofundme.com/send-a-dairy-herd-to-sanctuary Posted by Sharon Shannon on Tuesday, August 8, 2017

She said: “I was honoured to have met a truly amazing, humble and inspirational human being – who wishes to remain anonymous and not attract any attention or praise.

“The noble and admirable decision to send these beautiful animals to a sanctuary is an awakening example of how kindness and compassion and a tender heart has won over in a world full of greed.”