Learning English

The animals protecting Britain's Christmas dinners

South American alpacas are not normally known in the UK for their skills as guards. But an innovative turkey farm in the south of England is using them to make sure the traditional bird makes it to the Christmas dinner table.

Language challenge

According to the English expression, who or what doesn't vote for Christmas?

a) Santa
b) Brussels sprouts
c) turkeys

Watch the video and complete the activity

The story

The farm's been rearing turkeys since the 1950s and sells around 24,000 a year.

The birds roam free outside, which has obvious benefits, but there is one big downside: predators and foxes in particular.

The farm's director, Tom Copas, has come up with an unusual deterrent, as he told me during a visit to the farm in early November.

"Well, we actually started using alpacas. We were getting hammered by the fox. We'd just moved the birds out to their rearing facilities and we got foxes in and we lost over a hundred in the first one week and we kept on losing birds."

Key words and phrases

standing guard
protecting something to make sure it stays safe or doesn't escape

keeping watch
paying close attention to a situation so you can react to any problems

brainchild
someone's plan or original idea

To do

Try our quiz to see how well you've learned today's language.

Downloads

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Language challenge - answer

c) turkeys.

End of Session 2

Join us in Session 3 for Lingohack - our video which teaches you words from the news using the latest BBC World News bulletins.