Desert Falcons take off with help of RDP grant

RURAL Carmarthenshire business Desert Falcons has expanded with the help of an RDP Sir Gâr Redundant Rural Building grant.

Martyn Paterson grew up with falcons and started professionally breeding them in 1993. After losing his job at the beginning of 2010 he decided to use his 20 years experience to start and run his own business as a full-time occupation with his wife Katarina.

Desert Falcons has gone from strength to strength and was struggling to meet the demand for birds when they applied for grant funding to expand their premises.

Aside from the specialist pens for the falcons; there was no specific building from where they could run their breeding programme, with some of their operation, including incubation and rearing taking place within their own home.

Martyn and Katarina used the grant to convert a redundant stone barn to provide an office/day room, kitchen, bathroom, incubation room, falcon rearing room and a utility room.

Martyn said: “With the new dedicated building we are much better placed to run the business and increase the number of chicks we rear. Hopefully we will be looking to recruit additional full-time and part-time members of staff.”

The Redundant Rural Buildings Grant provides assistance to micro businesses for the conversion of rural Carmarthenshire buildings that are no longer used into business premises. The grant is funded by the Rural Development Plan (RDP) for Wales 2007 – 2013 which is funded by the Welsh Government and the European Agricultural fund for Rural Development.

For further details on the Redundant Rural Buildings Grant, please contact Grant Cole, Project Development Officer on: GCole@carmarthenshire.gov.uk / (01267) 242431

To find out about the variety of grants and support available through RDP Sir Gâr visit www.wwec.org.uk