COWS RAISED by inmates in a Co Wicklow prison will be airlifted to an orphanage in Romania later this month.
Friesian calves were donated by farmers through aid organisation Bóthar two years ago and have been raised since by prisoners at Shelton Abbey .
This will be the first time Bóthar has sent cows to Romania, where they will yield twice the volume of milk of local animals. The heifers are pregnant, so will also yield a calf.
Nine prisoners work on the 40- acre farm at the low-security open prison where they stay on trust without being confined by walls. They also grow vegetables and flowers and care for Bóthar’s goats before transport to Africa.
Yesterday an event was held at the prison to mark the imminent departure of the herd. Prison governor Michael Lawton said the initiative had helped prisoners to “foster a sense of responsibility” and given them a chance to “give something back”.
Some inmates spoke to The Irish Times about how the work had affected them. One prisoner spoke of the responsibility he felt towards the animals.
“You have to look after the animals, make sure they are not sick, are gaining their weight, are clean, so they are good and healthy when going over there,” he said.
Raising the animals helped in his rehabilitation. “It helps you realise that no matter what you did, you can always become a better person,” he said.
Helping people less fortunate “helps you to come to terms with what you did,” he said.
A second prisoner who grew up in a city spoke of the great satisfaction of “rearing the heifer from when they are young up to this stage . . . and what happens at the end makes people worse off than us happy,” he said.
Dr Ovidiu Spinu of charity Heifer International explained how communism had destroyed agriculture, leaving many mixed breeds of cows of low production compared with Irish dairy cows.
Twenty cows would be sent to the Timisoara orphanage in remote western Romania with 177 orphans, he said.
