Craze for taking farming felfies now spreading across the region

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are featuring more and more weird and wacky pictures of farmers and their livestock.

There is a dedicated page called Felfies (which stands as selfies for farmers) on Facebook, which so far has been "liked" by more than 20,500 people.

It features hundreds of pictures, including a calf sharing breakfast in the kitchen, a farmworker taking a rest on the backs of a feeding herd of cows and a woman in a Christmas hat holding a duck . . . and an axe.

The page was only created on December 19 but has already generated lots of interest. Many of the pictures feature animals, particularly cows, giving their owners a big, sloppy "kiss", while one unfortunate farmer has posted a picture of himself covered in manure.

There is also a #felfie hashtag on Twitter, with contributions from farmers as far away as the Netherlands and Egypt as well as across the UK. While most pictures are of farmer and animal, some have added cheeky captions including "Eat, sleep, milk, repeat" and "Some women on the dancefloor tonight", taken of a herd of cows.

The felfie craze started after the Irish Farming Journal launched a Christmas competition to find the best picture, claiming that if selfies were good enough for the Pope and President Obama, they were good enough for Irish farmers.

The winner, as judged by the number of Facebook likes, was taken by PJ Ryan, of Tipperary, and was of him in a field, thumbs up and pipe in mouth, in front of his herd of historic Salers breed cattle.

But in the short time since, the craze has snowballed to include farmers from all over the world keen to share their favourite images of their livestock.

Now we want to see the best Shropshire and Mid Wales has to offer.

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