Huntly pig farmer is top of the crop after triumph at the British Farming Awards
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A YOUNG woman who is responsible for a huge pig enterprise near Gartly was named as Farm Worker of the Year at the British Farming Awards.
Chloe Shorten (22) swopped her boilersuit and wellies for a dress for the awards night in Birmingham attended by around 700 people and was completely overwhelmed when she was named as winner in her category.
The former Keith Grammar School pupil set out to study to be a vet then changed track to study agriculture and is now part way through a BSc honours course - juggling her studies with working on the pig unit owned by J C Innes.
Chloe is also winner of the Royal Northern Agricultural Society’s award for the person under 35 who has made the greatest contribution to agriculture and at the end of this month, she travels to London for the awards night for the Pig Farmer of the Year title which she’s also in the running for.
Chloe joined the team at JC Innes three years ago for work experience but very quickly decided she had found her perfect job.
Soon after she was appointed as assistant manager in the pig unit and since August 2020 has been manager.
She said: “I had always loved seeing pigs out in fields and when I left school I worked on an outdoor unit.
“I wasn’t long into my vet course when I knew that it wasn’t for me and what I wanted to do was work with pigs. I now study part time, so my course will take me twice as long but it means I am able to work with pigs.”
On a daily basis, Chloe has overall responsibility for the 1100 breeding sows and as many as 3000 piglets and 14 boars.
The female pigs, gilts go to a breeding unit elsewhere and the males are all fattened.
Her working day starts at 7am and officially ends at 4pm but most days she is there until 6pm.
Faarrowing takes place every three weeks and to ensure maximum survival rates, she’s back at the unit from 10pm until 3am at least five nights.
She explained: “Gilts are first time mums so they don’t really know what’s going on. The average Scottish litter is 14.68 piglets but they can have as many as 23 but with only 16 teats we need to foster the extra ones one to another sow.”
Chloe is passionate about her industry and as well as writing a traditional newspaper column, embraces social media to tell her stories. Her TikTok account has 30,000 followers and a photo of her and her favourite boar, Bert, has been viewed 15.2 million times.
She said: “It’s a high health unit, we can’t have visitors so Tik Tok helps get people behind the closed doors. It’s a hidden industry and gets bad publicity - so I am so glad of the recognition as its really positive for the industry.
“I would never harm the pigs and we are soon to have new farrowing buildings so the sows won’t need to be in crates and I just can’t wait.”
The judging panel were impressed by Chloe’s self-motivated approach and her attention to detail and care for the pigs and her staff.
They said: “Chloe is clearly very forward thinking, looking at international best practice and taking inspiration to get ahead of the game on welfare issues back on the farm. Her impressive following on TikTok is helping to improve the public opinion on pig farming, especially among younger people.”
The awards were hosted by Vernon Kay and sitting just a couple of tables away from Chloe was Jeremy Clarkson.
