Geronimo the alpaca legal fight cost £43k plus lost income

Helen Macdonald is continuing her campaign despite losing the latest legal battle in the High Court

The owner of a condemned alpaca said a protected legal fight over the animal's health has cost £43,000 and left her without farming income for four years.

Helen Macdonald's alpaca Geronimo has twice tested positive for bovine tuberculosis but she maintains they were false positives and he is healthy.

The Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) has ordered the animal to be euthanised.

"What price do you put on a healthy animal's life?", she said.

"It's a struggle but we've always said that we would keep going until such time as we can't go any further," the alpaca farmer from Wickwar near Bristol said.

Supporters at Ms Macdonald's farm want eight-and-a-half-year-old Geronimo to be given a reprieve

Ms Macdonald has vowed to fight on despite losing a last-ditch attempt to save Geronimo in the High Court on Wednesday.

She has been informed the destruction warrant will not be enforced until 17:00 BST.

She said she was "constantly anxious" because she had been living with the threat of the destruction warrant for the past couple of weeks.

"What I want to see is the grown up conversations I've been asking for for four years.

"This is an opportunity for all livestock keepers and wildlife enthusiasts to stand up and demand that we have a policy review.

"They have this horrendous kill at all costs policy," she added.

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Geronimo was imported from New Zealand in 2017 and has been kept in quarantine since his arrival.

"If Geronimo is killed they say I'm entitled to something like £1,500, but I wouldn't accept it because that's blood money as far as I'm concerned," she said.

Ms Macdonald said she believed the tests were returning false positives but has been refused permission to have Geronimo tested for a third time

She previously said she would obstruct any officials who arrived at her property to carry out the destruction order.

"We wouldn't break the law but we will make it difficult. Our best defence is cameras and doing whatever we can to make it difficult so that we can keep him alive."

The Government has insisted all the evidence on the animal's condition had been "looked at very carefully".

A Defra spokesman said: "We are sympathetic to Ms Macdonald's situation - just as we are with everyone with animals affected by this terrible disease.

"It is for this reason that the testing results and options for Geronimo have been very carefully considered by Defra, the Animal and Plant Health Agency and its veterinary experts, as well as passing several stages of thorough legal scrutiny."