Wild Animals in Circuses (No. 2) Bill (Second sitting)

Anna Turley Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st May 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Trudy Harrison]

I am sorry; I misheard you.

Carol MacManus: I said that they would not be happy being left at home.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q Thank you very much for coming to give evidence. Could you talk us through a bit more about how you look after animals, and what their sleeping conditions and training regime are like? Could you talk us through an average day for the animals?

Peter Jolly: An average day starts at about 8 o’clock. My grazing animals are outside. They have inside and outside access, so it is up to them whether they go out or come in. They are cleaned, mucked out, fed any concentrated food that is required, and watered. Young animals in training go into the circus tent and are walked through, to start with. With all the animals, we walk them into the tent so that they can see the atmosphere, and we feed them as we are doing it. That might be for 15 minutes, and they then go back out into their paddocks for the rest of the day.

At 4 o’clock, we bring them in to what we call the stable tent, where they are kept before the performance, and they are groomed and checked over. If they wear any sort of headdress or harness, that is where those are fitted. They do their performance, which lasts anything up to three to four minutes. They stay in that tent until the end of the whole performance and then go back out to the grazing. That is a typical day for them.

[Anna Turley]

Q That is really helpful, thank you. What sort of performance is it? What do they typically do?

Peter Jolly: The camels and the zebras basically walk around the ring. They stand on what we call pedestal stands and the zebra walks in and out of them. I have a donkey and a lamb in the same act, and a miniature cow, and it lasts anything up to three minutes.

[Anna Turley]

Q How long would it take to train an animal to do that?

Peter Jolly: The training starts when they are young and it is not training them in tricks. The training is in teaching them to lead, and to come to you when you want them. With all our animals, we can go to the edge of our enclosure and call them and they will come up to us, and that is done only by reward and training.

Carol MacManus: It is trust.

[Anna Turley]

Q That is a question I was going to ask. During those training stages, what happens if an animal does not comply or does not respond?

Peter Jolly: You take it out. It is very similar to with children. If children start doing work wrong, the more you push them the worse it gets. So all you do is say, “Right, that’s it. Training session over. Start tomorrow again”.

Carol MacManus: It is all little and often.

Peter Jolly: It is all done by reward. Some of it is clicker training, and some of it is by reward.

[Anna Turley]

Q You said that you have substantial regulation to monitor all that. Have you had any issues where you have had to bring vets in, or any crises in the last year? What sort of situations have you had?

Peter Jolly: No crises. We have had two inspections this year up to now. We have had no health problems. In our regime you have to worm, and the lead vet has to check them four times a year. You have to record any tiny problem like worming and things like that. It all has to be checked. We also take weights four times a year.

[Anna Turley]

Q So you have not had to call a vet for any of your wild animals?

Carol MacManus: Not since the start of this year, no, if you are counting this year.

Peter Jolly: Only the inspection vets.

[The Chair]

We have under 20 minutes left. Four colleagues have indicated that they want to speak before the Minister does. If anyone else wants to say something, could they catch my eye?