A FURNESS woman has expressed her ‘disgust’ after coming across what she estimated to be more than 100 moles strung up on a farm gate.

The lady, from Haverthwaite, who did not wish to be named, came upon the dead animals at Heathwaite Farm, near Grizebeck.

She said: “I just find it really distressful and concerning why someone would do this - it’s 2020.

“Times have changed, it isn’t acceptable in this day and age to behave in that way.

“Imagine all the children with that image in their heads - it’ll traumatise them.”

The lady called for the removal of the moles and said: “They’ve started rotting and stinking and nothing is being done.”

She said she had reported the presence of the moles to South Lakeland District Council.

A spokesman for Heathwaite Farm said: “In farming you have to control them and we get a chap in to see to our moles and that what was what he did with them.”

He said moles digging could cause soil contamination of silage which could kill cattle.

“It’s something that all farms have to get done," he said.

"A lot of them have to do them themselves.

"I thought the moles had been removed but we’ll see that they are."

Mike Sanderson, National Farmers’ Union (NFU) county advisor for Cumbria, said: “It’s a long-standing tradition. Mole catchers who are employed by landowners - as moles are vermin - used to do it and and have been doing it for years and years and years to show how many moles they have caught, effectively to show they have done their job.”

Mr Sanderson said mole-catchers were historically paid by acre or sometimes according to the number of moles caught.

“Obviously as time’s gone on it’s become less prevalent because people might not want to see that sort of thing at the roadside,” he said.

He said the NFU did not have a particular position on moles being strung up.

It is understood the district council is investigating the incident.