THE Gazette & Herald this week launches an innovative scheme to allow livestock farmers to show their stock online.

The foot and mouth crisis has led to the cancellation of virtually all of the agricultural shows this season and so breeders and other livestock farmers have no opportunity to show their wares. As a result, we have decided to open up our website - This is Ryedale - to allow Ryedale area farmers to show their best animals to the world.

And, considering the current sorry state of agriculture, we are going to make this service free.

We're calling this feature Livestock Online and it's easy for you to use. You send us a good-quality photo of your very best stock (not more than six please) with a brief description of their breeding and quality and we'll do the rest.

From the home page of This is Ryedale, visitors will be directed to a portion of the site set aside for this online agricultural show. To begin with, there will be four sections, for beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep and pigs. If we get lots of entries, we will break these down into breed categories.

Just send your photos and caption information (be sure to include your name, full mailing address and telephone number in case we need to contact you) to Tracy Green, This is Ryedale, Gazette & Herald, PO Box 29, 76-86 Walmgate, York YO1 9YN. Or e-mail the photos and information to tracy.green@ycp.co.uk (the copy should be in rich text format and the photos in jpeg).

Updated: 08:59 Thursday, July 05, 2001