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Farmer’s partner saves £10k herd of calves stranded 200m offshore by swimming with them to safety

Polly Dugmore, who is also a vet, donned a wetsuit and lifejacket to guide the animals one-by-one for 90 minutes as the midnight tide rose

A herd of 40 calves worth around £10,000 in total was rescued from the sea after escaping their field through an open gate and ending up on a rocky outcrop some 200m off the coast of Cornwall.
Robin Kendall, the farmer, and his partner Polly Dugmore, who is a vet, staged a midnight race against the tide that involved Ms Dugmore swimming with the terrified animals for “a marathon” 90 minutes.
Police alerted Mr Kendall, of Bodrugan Barton Farm in Mevagissey, that his 10-week-old Wagyu calves – worth around £250 each – had been spotted off Colona Beach when the light of a boat lit up “multiple pairs of eyes”. 
Along with Mr Kendall’s father, Tim, they scrambled down to the coast and, as the coastguard lit the scene with powerful torches, successfully saved the calves from drowning by towing the herd, swimming with them back to shore and herding them back to the field on Thursday night.
Ms Dugmore, who put on a wetsuit and a lifejacket before getting in the pitch black water with the calves, said: “We could just see calf eyes glinting back at us because it was so dark.
“There wasn’t enough space on the rock for the calves to stand on it and the water had risen to sort of midway up their bodies, past the top of their legs.
“They were all sort of scrabbling to stay on this ever-shrinking rock with the water slowly rising.”
She continued: “I managed one or two at a time to swim them to shore by just sort of swimming behind them and acting like a bit of a rudder and just kept turning them so that they were heading towards the rocks.”
Ms Dugmore said six out of 10 were quite easy to swim to shore but four panicked and tried to swim out to sea. However, she said adrenaline kicked in and she was able to get them back.
“You get more physical ability by the adrenaline surge,” she added.
Mr Kendall, who took to his boat during the incident, said any farmer would have done the same thing to help their animals.
He said: “We were just lucky we had a boat, a swimmer and all the equipment to be able to do it and the coastguard were there to help if anything went wrong.
Mevagissey coastguard said their team were alerted at around 1am and provided safety cover, together with Fowey RNLI, while the farmers evacuated the cows in a race against the rising tide.
A spokesperson said: “The farmer used a small boat to bring them back one at a time. Simultaneously, his wife swam back and forth to the rocks, bringing back one or two young cows every time by encouraging them to swim.
“She did this for a marathon 90 minutes, by which time the sea was up to their necks. But luckily all the cattle were brought safely to dry land.
“A good result and no injuries to the farmers. The team booked off at around 4am.”

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