Jeremy Clarkson has backtracked on his vow to save his beloved cow from the abbatoir after his farm falls on rough times.
In the new series of his Amazon Prime show Clarkson's Farm, the former Top Gear host is gutted to see her taken away. But after his farm, Diddly Squat, is hit by financial problems, his hand is forced.
The 64-year-old grew fond of Pepper the cow in Clarkson's Farm 2, when he spoke to a cattle breeder's young daughter.
He said: "This is my pet. Five-year-old Rosie, from the farm we bought her from, said this cow was her favourite. She asked: 'Would you look after Pepper for me?’ So I said I would."
In the same series, it was suggested that Pepper be sent for meat, after a vet found out she wasn't pregnant. But Clarkson was having none of it, snapping: "I'm not eating Pepper, and that’s the end of it."
In Clarkson's Farm 3, the farm hits hard times, with he and farm manager Kaleb Cooper making the decision to rear pigs to try to save the business. This means half his cows must be sent away - including poor Pepper. Clarkson is heartbroken to let go of his pet cow, saying: "I'm finding today really quite sad. Pepper is going, obviously — what do you think will become of her?"
On another episode in the series, Jeremy and his girlfriend Lisa discovered a group of piglets had sadly died under horrific circumstances. After hoping to focus on pig farming rather than dairy, Clarkson can be seen caring for his pigs after they welcomed their first litter of tiny piglets.
But it soon becomes obvios things aren't going well for the baby pigs, and during one scene, filmed at night, Jeremy can be heard saying: "One of them is as weak as hell." Hours later, he hands Lisa two piglets who have sadly died.
She says: "Oh no," before bursting into tears, cradling the two little creatures. The heartbreaking scene then shows Lisa sobbing as she puts her head into a distraught Jeremy's neck, before the cameras cut out. Jeremy recently told The Times: "A cow has one calf, whereas the last bout of births we had, one of our pigs had fourteen piglet
"That's a lot of money. I reckoned the pigs would provide something that's sadly lacking in farming today: a bit of genuine happiness. It was almost unbelievably sad, we had a catastrophically high level of deaths. The piglets were sadly accidentally crushed by their mothers while some died of natural causes in infancy."
But the following day, Jeremy says: "The next day, irony of ironies, we get a visit from the butcher. Holy moly! The only words I can think of are 'Farmer logic', because all farmers love animals — and then they kill them and sell them."
The butcher quips: "This way you can love them twice."
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