Livestock keeping around Kirkby looks nothing like livestock keeping in the Ribble Valley, and the compliance pressures are different because of it. Holdings here are smaller, closer to housing, and frequently run alongside another job, which means a death on the ground has to be dealt with by somebody who is not standing in the field when it happens. Martlands provides fallen stock and ABP collection from a DEFRA approved site at Burscough, roughly ten miles up the road, and fallen stock collection Kirkby keepers can actually get on the day is largely a function of that distance. The law makes no allowance for the size of the holding, so a smallholder with four ewes on Simonswood Moss carries the same duty as a two hundred cow dairy.
The Legal Position for Kirkby Livestock Keepers
Under the Animal By-Products (Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 the keeper of the animal must arrange for fallen stock to be collected without undue delay, which in practice means within 24 hours of the animal being found. Burial and burning on the holding were made unlawful across the United Kingdom in 2003 and remain so. That last point catches people out on urban fringe land more than anywhere else, because a small holding with a digger and a quiet corner has an obvious way of dealing with the problem, and it is an unlawful one that leaves the keeper personally liable.
There is a second reason it matters here specifically. Kirkby sits on mossland with a high water table, and much of the surrounding agricultural ground drains into a managed network of ditches and brooks that feed towards the Alt catchment. Ground like this is exactly where buried material causes a problem that surfaces months later, and where an environmental complaint is likely to be traced back to the holding it came from. Using our farm and fallen stock collection service closes that risk off entirely, and produces the paperwork to prove it.
Why Proximity Is the Practical Advantage Here
Kirkby is one of the easiest places in the North West for us to reach quickly. The Burscough depot sits north east along the A59, and the M58 runs directly between the two with the M57 interchange on Kirkby’s doorstep. For a keeper this matters in one specific circumstance, which is warm weather. An animal that dies overnight in July on ground with no shade deteriorates fast, and the difference between collection today and collection the day after tomorrow is the difference between a routine job and one that has become unpleasant for everybody, including neighbours who can see and smell the field.
The same routes cover the wider area, so a Kirkby holding is served on the same rounds as farms booked under Merseyside fallen stock collection, and neighbouring ground towards St Helens fallen stock collection and down into Liverpool fallen stock collection. Small holdings sometimes assume they are too minor to be worth a licensed collector’s time. They are not, and the round is already passing.
Horses, Ponies and Livery Yards on the Town Edge
A significant share of the animals kept around Kirkby, Northwood and out towards Melling are horses and ponies rather than farm livestock, on grazing that ranges from formal livery to a rented paddock. Equines are animal by-product in exactly the same way cattle and sheep are, and the duty to arrange lawful collection applies whether the animal was a working horse, a retired pony or a companion animal. Where an animal has been euthanised by a veterinary surgeon using barbiturates, the carcass must be handled as Category 1 material because of the drug residue, and it cannot be treated as ordinary fallen stock. Tell us at the point of booking if that is the case, because it changes how the load is handled from the moment it leaves the yard.
Category 1 Material and Where It Goes
Fallen ruminants are handled as Category 1 animal by-product on specified risk material grounds, which restricts the permitted end points to rendering and incineration and prohibits mixing with lower category loads in transit. Our Category 1 ABP collection runs under Animal By-Products Licence No APB/CCN21/373/8002, Waste Carrier Licence CB/QE5406MT and Site Licence EAWML/100236. Categorisation for pigs and poultry follows the rules for those species rather than being assumed to be Category 1, which is worth knowing if you keep a mixed group on the same ground.
Cattle Over 48 Months and TSE Sampling
Any bovine animal over 48 months old that dies on the holding must be sampled for transmissible spongiform encephalopathy before disposal, regardless of how obvious the cause of death was. Martlands is a DEFRA approved processing and sampling facility, so the brain stem sample is taken as part of the same collection rather than requiring the animal to be moved twice. Smaller Kirkby holdings running a handful of suckler cows are the ones most likely to be unaware this applies to them, since it rarely comes up until the first old cow dies.
Dog Attacks and Worrying on Urban Fringe Grazing
Land within walking distance of housing carries a risk that upland farms simply do not face at the same intensity. Sheep worrying by dogs is the single most common cause of sudden multiple losses on holdings of this type, and it tends to produce several casualties at once rather than a single animal. That creates a compliance problem as well as a distressing one, because the 24 hour expectation applies to all of them and the keeper is usually trying to deal with an incident, an insurer and possibly the police at the same time. Our note on what happens if a dog kills livestock covers the immediate steps, and the practical point for collection is to call early and give an accurate count rather than ringing three times as you find more.
Documentation and Why Small Holdings Get Caught Out
Every collection generates a Commercial Document setting out what was taken, when, from where and under whose licence. Larger farms treat this as routine because assurance scheme audits force them to. Smaller keepers often do not have that discipline imposed on them, and then find themselves needing the evidence for something they did not anticipate, such as an insurance claim, a grazing licence dispute, or a local authority officer responding to a complaint from a neighbour. Keeping the documents in order costs nothing at the time and is close to impossible to reconstruct later, and our guide to fallen stock record keeping for UK farmers sets out what a workable system looks like on a holding of any size.
Cattle deaths also need notifying to the British Cattle Movement Service, and the Commercial Document is what allows you to show that the notification and the physical removal of the animal describe the same event. Collections booked through the KoLeCt system leave a consistent trail, and as an NFSCO member Martlands operates within the national scheme, which is often the simplest route for keepers already registered through it.
Booking a Collection From a Kirkby Holding
Call 01704 776977 to arrange a collection or to ask how the service would work for your ground before anything happens. It helps to have the location of the animal, the species, an approximate age for cattle, and vehicle access details ready when you ring. If you would rather set it up in writing, you can contact us instead and we will come back to you. Keepers who register the holding in advance are not making the arrangement for a hypothetical event, they are removing the part of the process that is hardest to do calmly on the morning it is needed.
