AN artist and sculptor with a penchant for recycling agricultural scrap metal has just completed his latest commission.

Stephen Parker has created Rusty Red Rooster, which resembles an outsize weathercock but has become the motif for a free range egg producing business at Catton, near Thirsk.

The Potter family turned to Mr Parker for the eye-catching metal cockerel, which now stands guard over 80,000 hens and will be incorporated in designs for new packaging.

Mr Parker, of Kirkby Malzeard, runs Creative Metal Salvage from a workshop at Pickhill and spent about 80 hours producing the cockerel plough mould boards after studying the skeleton and muscle systems of poultry.

Mr Parker, who studied three-dimensional design at colleges in York and Newcastle, finances his part-time artistic interests from agricultural work.

He has developed the concept of agrisculpture and once admitted that he had fallen in love with scrap metal, having stored a vast quantity of the material collected from farms on which he has worked.

One of his previous commissions in 1998 was a bizarre 8ft high mythical creature, resembling a cross between a dinosaur and the classic film monster Alien, created for the entrance to a farm near Burneston.

The 41-year-old said: "I am interested in rural art, corporate art and public art. I want to do more things that people can sit in and walk through. I want to put people's ideas into practice."

Mr Parker's other artistic interests include photography, street theatre, performance art and furniture making.