Bruised Soul

Tell us a bit about your upbringing.

I grew up on the family’s farms near Port William in Wigtownshire until I was about 13 or 14. When my father died my grandmother sold the farms and everything changed. All my life I had expected to become a farmer.

After going to Dumfries to college I went into hospitality. I ran award-winning restaurants and bars and pubs in Lancashire for 11 or 12 years, then I moved up north to the shores of Loch Ness.

How did the hoof trimming start?

I wasn’t enjoying the Loch Ness job and moved back. My stepfather had a business doing animal husbandry – freeze branding cows, looking after their environment and hoof trimming.

I couldn't hoof trim cows’ feet because it's highly skilled, and didn't want to because I thought it was a dirty, horrible, thankless task. But I started freeze branding and helping manage his business while he was in hospital.

I was travelling a lot doing the freeze branding but then met my wife Ashley, my girlfriend at the time, and wanted to be closer to home. The way to do that was by learning hoof trimming.

Did you start to like it?

Well, I've got bipolar and ADHD, and lots of little things going on. I get invested in things, and this is the only industry I've worked in where I learn something every single day – that’s despite having trimmed hundreds of thousands of cows’ feet.

I learned from the world's most renowned hoof trimming trainers. As soon as I met him and he started talking about the anatomy of a cow's feet and the constant progression of the industry, it just ignited something in me. I love it.

Why do they need trimming?

We take a natural animal and put them into unnatural circumstances, so we need to do something unnatural to counteract the negative impact on a cow's feet. That thing is hoof trimming. They're not walking as far as they should be, which is one problem.

Another one is there's a lot more moisture in the environments in which they live, so their feet become softer. Also, we breed cows with larger udders than is natural. That affects how cows walk, so we need to counteract that as well.

We also need to make sure that a cow's feet are balanced because they grow at uneven rates. The outside claw grows quicker than the inside claw, and they're not walking enough to wear that down.

Are you like a farrier, largely working preventatively?

Ninety to 95% of what we do is preventative care, because that's what is more beneficial for the farmers, moneywise, and the rest is therapeutic.

The therapeutic ones are the ones that draw millions of people in to watch videos, because they can be quite graphic, and you can have a much greater impact on a cow's life by therapeutically trimming her. But the best impact you can have is by routinely trimming her, because you never get to the therapeutic stage.

What gave you the idea for a YouTube channel?

Some people refer to ADHD as a superpower, because you become obsessed by things, and that's true of me.

I noticed that the only cows’ feet featured on YouTube were good cows’ feet which were made a little bit better by the trimming, never the bad feet. The reason is because it is difficult to convey in the correct light.

People have a negative opinion of farming, especially the dairy industry, so people were cautious about putting anything like that online.

And I felt that as long as it's presented in the right way, that it could actually be positive. I wanted to show that farmers are doing a lot to make sure their cows aren't lame, but here's what happens when they go lame, here's why they're lame.

I think we've done that. The number of viewers fluctuates but never drops below 60 million a month. If you look through the comments we get, the vast majority are positive.

And people who start off with something negative can become the biggest believers in the process.

Tell me a bit about the book.

I was approached by a few publishers wanting me to write a fluffy farming, agricultural, countryside-style book because it would earn quite a lot of money.

But I wasn’t interested. If I was going to write a book, I wanted it to be for me, but to also benefit people somehow.

When you go online and you glance at other people's profiles you draw comparisons. Why are they doing so well? How come they are having so much fun? Maybe we don't consciously do it, but we compare ourselves to influencers. But it’s a curated story. I wanted to show people that comparing yourself to these people online isn't good for you. You don't know the reality of their lives.

Everything I put online is 100% true. I am that happy. Good things happen all the time, but there is another side where I'm really not happy, and I haven't been happy in the past.

I'm doing well for myself and viewers can see what we've achieved – the nice house and car in the background.

But I wanted to show where I've come from and what I've done. A lot of people will be in those situations, and they'll think there's no way out and no chance of them coming out the other side.

My story is of turmoil when I was younger, including lots of mental health issues, which I didn't understand. I knew there was something wrong, but didn't know what. Because of that, I made some very poor choices. There are some deep, dark places I've been. There were troubles within my parents’ relationship. It's been tumultuous.

But people who see me on social media will just see this happy person. I want people to be able to read a book and draw comparisons to their own lives and hopefully foresee a better life for themselves as well.

How did you go about the writing?

I wrote the book with my brother Bob, which was a cathartic experience. So, we sat every Monday for hour on hour, talking to each other, reminiscing and going over things that we'd written and pulling it together. He's put the artistic flair on my words. We've written it together, but he's the one who's really pulled it together.