Farm needs help in finding a name for unusual new arrival

Now children have been invited to christen the 18-month-old white wallaby who arrived at Mark Hebdon's Monk Park Farm at Bagby, near Thirsk, last week.

Mr Hebdon is offering a free family day pass to the child who comes up with the most apt and original name for the male wallaby, bought from Roland Todd, at nearby Sutton, who supplies zoos with exotic species.

"I bought him to put to my female brown wallabies in the hope of getting some white joeys, which are rarer than the brown," said Mr Hebdon, who has kept wallabies since 2000, alongside llamas, alpacas and rare breeds of sheep and cattle.

Until now, Mr Hebdon bred from his seven females using a brown male wallaby, Max, who hit the headlines when he escaped.

"Max will be staying here but he won't be as busy," he said. "I'm very pleased with the new animal but he needs a name."

Children should send their name, age, address and name suggestion to Mr Hebdon at Monk Park Farm Visitor Centre, Bagby, Thirsk, North Yorkshire YO7 2AQ, by March 14.

"I like to keep something a bit different and the public love the wallabies. They are a bit more interesting than normal farm animals," he said.

Although they are natives of Australia, they coped well with the Yorkshire climate and could withstand temperatures as low as -20C.

"They're quite cheap to keep," said Mr Hebdon. "They have a shed with deep straw and their diet is mainly flaked maize and peas, chicken pellets, nuts and apples."

The visitor centre opens for the new season tomorrow, weekends only until April 1, after which it is open daily.

The centre, which last year attracted 22,000 visitors, opened in 1999 but suffered badly in the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001, when sheep, cattle, goats and deer were culled when a nearby property was infected. Mr Hebdon has now re-stocked with Herdwick sheep, deer and Belted Galloway, Highland and Longhorn cattle. He also has ostrich-like rheas, alpacas and llamas