Bahrain’s royal family to open ‘seven-star’ falcon-breeding farm in UK
Bahrain’s royal family plan to launch a “seven-star breeding project” for peregrine falcons at a farm in North Yorkshire, Britain, where the birds of prey will be born and raised before being taken to the Gulf.
The ruling Al Khalifa family has enlisted the help of British falcon expert Dr Mark Robb to open the centre to meet high demand for the birds.
An application submitted to Hambleton District Council in North Yorkshire laid out the family’s ambitions for the centre, in the town of Easingwold, which would hold public open days and educational talks for school groups.
Dr Robb, who has decades of experience of breeding falcons, set up a breeding centre in nearby Stokesley two years ago.
While falconry has been a way of life in the Arabian Gulf for centuries, the practice has become popular in Britain.
The application says Yorkshire, in northern England, is favoured for the project because its climate is more suited to breeding the birds than that of other parts of the UK.
The documents state that the farm “offers everything a falcon breeding project can hope for” because it is in a flat, semi-rural area, “well shielded from sight from all angles”.
“The trees surrounding the fields also provide sufficient vegetation for natural drainage of the ground and oxygen exchange/water evaporation on hot days,” the application said.
“This will not be an overnight success, it will require imprinting of new falcons, importation of suitable breeding stock as well as many hours of work.
“At the moment, we have eight full-time employees at the site in Great Broughton. Two of these people will come with us to the new site as we are now depending on them to be able to get the new project up and running to the quality that our Bahrain clients require.”
It also said: “We have been informed that the royal family of Bahrain want a seven-star breeding project, the only one of its kind from Bahrain.”
The application said breeding falcons in captivity was “extraordinarily complicated and time consuming” and was more challenging than breeding other bird species.
Submitting the application, Dr Robb set out the complexity of breeding falcons.
“Most other animals breed as a natural part of their life cycle,” he said. “However, falcons need certain conditions to be able to comfortably breed inside an aviary.
“Falcons also tend to be very picky with their partner. Just because we, as breeders, want that exact pair of birds to breed, it might not mean that the birds agree.
“This is why we imprint falcons and breed from them, with us as a ‘middle hand’ between the male and the female.”
Dr Robb said that in addition to falcons bred through imprinting, there was also demand from Gulf customers for traditionally bred birds.
“This is because the falcons flown by the clients in the Gulf need to behave like wild falcons and not like imprinted falcons,” he said.
“This means that any of the young birds that are to be exported for hunting need to be reared by a pair of falcons and not by humans.
“For a falcon to thrive in captivity, you need to enable them to perform their natural behaviours. One of these is, of course, to be able to fly.”
There has been no objection to the proposal and Hambleton District Council’s planning committee is expected to approve the application today.
A report compiled for the committee said the breeding centre would create jobs for local people and would “therefore be able to contribute to economic growth”.