A farm at the centre of a row over foul smells and pests has been sold, The Royal Gazette can reveal.

Lidia Medeiros, who ran Green Land Dairy Farm in Smiths, with husband Valter for five years, confirmed the couple had sold to the Almeida Dairy Farm in St George’s.

Ms Medeiros said: “We had a few reasons for the sale. We were having an issue with our business dealing with Dunkley’s Dairy and there were the ongoing issues with the neighbours about the smell, although we believe we solved the issue before the sale.”

She declined to discuss the problem with Dunkley’s Dairy.

The farm has been at the centre of a row over its manure pit, built to hold solid waste and urine from the farm’s 100-plus herd of cattle, which was blamed by residents in the surrounding area for swarms of flies, rats and pigeons.

Ms Medeiros said: “We have a new system coming for the pit, so hopefully that won’t be an ongoing issue for the new owners.”

Ms Medeiros added: “We ran the farm for almost five years, but we still have our landscaping business, so we are going to put all of our attention into that for now.”

She said: “I think we will miss the cows. Everyone gets attached to the animals. The money of the farm was always nice, but it was a good time for us to sell.”

Ms Medeiros declined to say how much the farm was sold for, but emphasised that the new owners had agreed to retain the farm’s one employee as part of the deal.

Paul Almeida, the owner of Almeida Farm, said: “I always wanted to be a bigger farm.

“We now have more than 150 cows. Green Land was the largest and I was the second-largest.”

Mr Almeida said he had worked with the Medeiros family on a solution to the odour complaints and he is confident the problem could be tackled by a new aeration system due to be installed by an Irish firm.

He added: “We have been looking for a new system, and it should be in the island by September.

“It works in Ireland, so I don’t see any reason why it won’t work in Bermuda as well.”

Ms Medeiros said earlier this month that Dairy Power Equipment had been recruited to install the new system, expected to reduce smells from the farm by 50 to 60 per cent.