Will you moo-ry me? Clogher Valley beef farmer dreams up '˜udderly ridiculous' wedding proposal

Ashley Farrell popped the question to his girlfriend Anna Louise Martin on Christmas Eve.

He tricked Anna, who’s from Hillsborough in County Down, by luring her into a cow shed with the promise of a calf as a Christmas present.

There she found the animal, a rather bewildered velvet Belted Galloway cross, painted with the message ‘MARRY ME?’ in red dye.

Miss Martin said she suspected nothing as Ashley wooed her to the cow shed, as he had already told her she was getting a calf for Christmas.

She said: “I went outside and saw a small calf but thought something was up because if he had the calf from November then it should be bigger than that.

“Then, before I could open my mouth, it turned around and the words ‘Marry me’ were painted on the side of it.

“I turned around and Ashley was on one knee with the ring in his hands and I of course said yes”.

Like many couples, Ashley and Anna Louise were quick to post their engagement announcement on Facebook, but they did not expect such a widespread reaction.

“My friend sent the photos into Farming Life newspaper and next thing I knew I was getting calls and texts from all different newspapers and media,” said Miss Martin.

“It’s all a bit of craic though.”

Although Ashley claims to have come up with the idea himself, there have been a spate of bizarre wedding proposals from farmers across the UK in the last year.

Just last week Cumbria based sheep farmer Stephen Boow’s wedding proposal was shear class — he wrote “Will you marry me” across four of his girlfriend’s sheep.

Nathan Evans borrowed a cow to carry his romantic message to his girlfriend Angela Olano from Berkshire at the South of England Show in West Sussex.

Bowthorpe Park Farm near Bourne in Lincolnshire was the venue where George Blanchard enlisted the help of the family’s pedigree Lincoln Red bull, Frosty, to pop the question to Nicola McLaughlin.

Rick Davies used weedkiller to spell out a message in a wheat crop in Buckinghamshire. Applying the pesticide from a quad bike, he wrote: “Di will you marry me?, left it for a while, then took Diana Cull over the field in a flight won at a charity auction so she could see it.