A farmer has warned of the dangerous consequences of feeding animals without obtaining permission. 

Victor Jones runs a small holding farm in Buckley that holds pigs and two donkeys. 

After noticing passers by feeding his donkeys in the field, he issued a plea via Facebook to ask people to refrain from feeding his animals. 

The donkeys are fed twice per day with hay and special donkey food, and Mr Jones warned feeding the animals other food can be very dangerous. 

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Mr Jones said: "People don't realise but the food they are feeding them is poisonous or toxic to them."

He continued: "People wouldn't go into the zoo and feed the animals there."

In the past, Mr Jones has had trouble with members of the public throwing food over to give to the pigs and other animals. 

He said: "I don't mind people coming to see them and I think people mean well, but my advice is that if you have spare food you want to give to the animals get in touch with the owners first."

Mr Jones hopes to stop people feeding animals without permission by encouraging people to get in touch with farmers or animal owners if they want to share any food. 

In reaction to Mr Jones' Facebook plea to residents of Buckley, several commented that he should place signs asking the public not to feed animals. 

However, Mr Jones fears that if these signs were placed they would be vandalised and people would be encouraged to disobey them. 

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The RSPCA advises members of the public to avoid feeding animals without the owners' permission. 

In a statement about horses the RSPCA says: "Horses may be on specialist diets to control issues such as laminitis or obesity, and food that might seem innocent to the general public can actually be highly dangerous to horses."

In May of 2020, Paige Binnersley, from Buckley, lost her four-year-old horse Apache - who she had bottle fed when he was just a few months old.

While a vet said cause of death could have been any one of a number of things, a strong possibility was poisoning from being fed something that he shouldn’t have.

Reacting to Mr Jones' plea on Facebook Paige responded by saying "This was my horse 2 years ago, he was being fed by passers-by.

"Don’t feed animals that aren’t yours"