A LITTER of kittens has been rescued after surviving the first six weeks of their lives in a combine harvester.

Farmers’ wife Shane Dew spent more than a week trying to entice the three kittens, which were born in the harvester and nursed there for six weeks, out into the open after they were discovered by a farm hand.

Ms Dew, who lives at High Beaumont Hill Farm, near Darlington, with her husband, David Hall, has spent every night since the kittens were discovered last week trying to tempt them out with food.

She managed to get the last of the three kittens – one grey male, a black male and a black female – out of the harvester on Wednesday night.

“I was going up every night and feeding them the nicest titbits I could find,” she said.

“I hid around corner of the combine with a lamp and tried to entice them out with chicken. When they appeared, I just grabbed them by the scruff of their necks.

“It was the only way I would have been able to get them – if I hadn’t, they would have just gone back into the combine.”

It took Ms Dew several nights to get any of the kittens to emerge from the harvester and she managed to catch the entire litter on three consecutive nights.

“It was hot and dusty and not pleasant at all,” she said.

“But it was such a relief to catch them. I was just ecstatic.

“I just thought, ‘thank goodness they are all in one place for the first time’.”

The kittens were born in the combine about six weeks ago. After Ms Dew noticed their mother had been pregnant and then had given birth, she had been searching the farm and derelict outbuildings for six weeks.

Now, she is looking after, socialising and weaning the kittens, in the porch of her farmhouse.

She said the kittens had been extremely lucky not to have come to misfortune inside the combine, particularly as the machine had been given a pre-harvest test run.

“It is much easier now they are here and I know they are safe,” she added. “I was so worried about them.”