Farmers help herd of calves swim to safety in Cornwall

• Grace Pascoe meets the farmers who saved their calves

A herd of around 40 calves have been safely returned to their field in Cornwall after escaping and finding themselves trapped on sea rocks.

The 10-week-old Waygu calves from Bodrugan Barton Farm were found at sea off Colona Beach. It's thought they pulled a pin on their gate.

In the pitch black, with the tide rising farmer Robin Kendall, Robin’s partner, vet Polly Dugmore and Robin's father Tim Kendall set to work on finding them and swimming every last one of the young cows to safety.

“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, they were all sort of slightly scrabbling to stay on this ever-shrinking rock with the water slowly rising," Polly said.

Rescuing the cattle took heroic efforts, Robin was on board his boat towing calves to the shore, Tim was on the rock with the cattle herding them and shining a torch to light their way, meanwhile Polly donned her wetsuit and lifejacket and swam the cattle in to the cliffs.

“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 say that they were heading towards the rocks.

"I would say out of 10 calves, six of them were quite easy to swim to the shore and maybe four out of ten would panic and try to swim off out to sea, those were a lot more effort for like, if they'd all been like that, we probably would run out of steam earlier on,” she added.

Robin says most farmers would've done the same if they could to help their animals.

“I think every farmer that I know would do their utmost to rescue an animal in that sort of situation.

"We were just quite lucky that we had a boat, a swimmer and all the equipment to be able to do it and the Coastguard were there if anything went really awry and the RNLI lifeboat was out in the bay watching as well".

Robin thinks the cows pulled a pin from a gate in their field but that they would've had to get through another gate to get to the beach which he believes could have been left open.

“My message would be please don't stray from a footpath, please shut gates after you and please keep your dogs on the lead".