Brewery helps to keep deer fed at drought-hit park

A brewery is helping to keep the resident deer at a park in Nottingham fed after a warm, dry summer has left them with less to graze on.

Wollaton Park is home to a herd of about 200 deer which roam freely and usually forage for their own food. But a summer of extreme weather has made finding food more difficult.

Nottingham City Council, which owns the Grade I-listed house and park, has called on local breweries to help by providing their spent grain - a by-product of the brewing process - to feed the deer.

Blue Monkey Brewery, one of the local independent firms which stepped in, said supporting the local park also provided a sustainable solution to getting rid of the grain.

Volunteer ranger Colin Robbins said at this time of year, the deer would usually be feeding off grass, wildflowers and tree leaves.

"If you walk in the park, you'll see the fields, they're very brown and the trees, they're looking quite sad as it were.

"So the park is very dry and the deer, they are struggling when they're foraging for their food," he said.

Robbins added that other volunteer rangers had helped the deer by cutting down branches that were out of the herd's reach.

But the spent grain has also helped to keep the animals full.

"The grains were put down and the first day, the deer kind of looked at it and had a little taste of it, and thought 'I'm not sure about this'.

"But two or three days later they started to think 'actually this is not too bad'."

The volunteer ranger urged visitors to the park not to feed the deer, despite the impact of the weather on foraging.

The city council has been contacted for comment.

Ian Wesley, commercial director of Blue Monkey Brewery, said it was one of four local breweries - which run an annual beer festival at city council-owned Nottingham Castle - which was contacted by the authority with a request for spent grain.

Wesley said: "We got an email to say the deer are running out of natural fodder to feed them in the park because of the drought and asked if we would be able to supply our spent grain to keep them going through this period."

The spent grain is a by-product of the brewing process, created when malt grain is mixed with water and its sugars and enzymes are extracted to create the wort for beer, Wesley added.

He said: "We get lots of unusual requests, but mainly for the finished product.

"This request, it had gone through our minds, that we could actually utilise it in local parks and farms for livestock.

"This helps our sustainability."

Wesley said breweries needed to keep a track of where their product went for "traceability".

"I'd be quite happy to do it longer term. Anything to help somebody else is always a positive," he added.

Listen to BBC Radio Nottingham on Sounds and follow BBC Nottingham on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.