A GROUP of farm vets are to walk a combined 70,500 miles, or 141 million steps, to raise money for charity Farm Africa.

Organised my Merial Animal Health, the challenge involves 100 farm vets recording their day-to-day mileage on FitBit personal trackers, and combining that with their virtual teammates to tick off increasingly large weekly targets, based on iconic routes in the UK and abroad, including Lands End to John O’Groats (874 miles, 1,748,000 steps), the width of Australia (2500 miles, 5 million steps) and circumnavigation of the globe (24,874 miles, 49,748,000 steps).

“These distance and step targets get progressively harder each week, but as more vets join the challenge the step goals will be shared by larger teams!” explained Victoria Hudson, Merial Animal Health’s product manager for calf vaccine Bovalto.

Merial is doing this to raise sponsorship cash for Farm Africa, a charity which helps farmers and communities in eastern Africa lift themselves out of poverty by providing support, training in effective farming methods, and links to markets to build more productive and profitable farming businesses.

“We believe in helping farmers farm better, with healthy animals that produce quality meat and milk,” said Ms Hudson. “Africa’s livestock farmers face significant challenges. They often lack the necessary skills, and have limited access to high quality animal feed, vaccines and medicines to improve their herd’s health or productivity.

“Farm Africa helps by giving livestock farmers the advice and access to co-ops to acquire the products and equipment they need, and opens up markets to them to sell their products at a better price. We have asked Farm Africa to direct the funds raised from the challenge to livestock work.”