Trends in lawn-mowing are moving ahead in leaps and bounds as more gardeners turn to home-bred wallabies to keep their paddocks in trim.

Thousands of miles from their native Outback the marsupials are replacing sheep, horses and geese in scores of country gardens and fields.

All prospective owners need to keep their lawns clipped are half an acre of land, a lot of grass and a large fence.

Trevor Lay, who runs Waveney Wildlife, of Bungay, Suffolk, has seen demand soar. He has been breeding wallabies for 25 years and is the biggest private supplier in the UK.

His traditional market has been to zoos and animal parks in Britain, the Continent and the Middle East, and on average he bred about 15 wallabies a year. Five years ago, however, he started receiving the odd enquiry from private individuals, and demand is so high that he is now breeding 35 a year.

He said: “It’s crazy. To be honest, if I had 100 I could easily get rid of them.”

In Norfolk, another breeder, Quintin Spratt, from Tacolneston, near Diss, is also being inundated with people asking about owning wallabies.

He specialises in albinos but at present breeds only one or two a year. He is now hoping to boost numbers. “Anyone who can keep a rabbbit can keep a wallaby. They are lovely, gregarious animals,” he said.

Both men are taking care to keep breeding records and to ensure that incestuous breeding does not take place.

The wallabies cost £150 for a male and £600 to £700 for a female, while the sought-after albino wallabies fetch £1,000 for a female and about £500 for a male.

They are sold in pairs because wallabies like living in a social group.

They would be useless as security guards, though. Mr Lay said: “They’d run a mile from a burglar or stranger. They are timid creatures and really harmless but adults will growl if their young are threatened. And they don’t like dogs.”

He takes care to ensure his wallabies go to proper homes with plenty of space for them to roam safely and freely and a fence or wall at least five feet high, and disapproves of the trend in the United States where some people keep wallabies as house pets.

On a waiting list for wallabies is Richard Sheepshanks, who lives at Rendlesham Hall, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. He has 10 acres of land.

“I have a wife, four children under the age of five, and we already have a menagerie with seven dogs, five sheep and four peacocks. I could use sheep to keep down the grass but they are messy and stupid,” he said.

He added: “We have a walled garden separated from the main house which has a 25-foot outer and 10-foot inner wall but it’s a bit wild and the grass needs keeping down. The wallabies will live there and be kept away from the dogs, which can easily stress them. I am sure in time, though, that they will get used to the dogs and everyone will get on famously.”

Case Study: Cute pets are part of family

When David Gard’s children spoke at school about their pet wallabies, a teacher reproached their father for the children’s “tall stories”. But behind the 7ft fence at the family’s home near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, there are indeed three red-necked male wallabies.

Mr Gard and his wife, Eve, both 40, bought them last year to enhance their land and to amuse their children, Alec, 13, Josh, eight, and Isabella, six.

His neighbours thought him “as mad as a hatter”. The Gards, however, are so pleased with their pets they have decided to buy two females in the hope of breeding the animals.

Mr Gard built a wallaby winter shelter — but they have never been in it. They eat grass and leaves, as well as apples, cabbage and bananas.

He said: “They are so easy to look after and so cute, even some of our friends are talking about getting some.”

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