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Daphne Scott has lost €1,600 worth of ewes in a dog attack and fears that others which sustained injuries may also die. The sheep were attacked on Saturday 2 February near Ballinagh, Co Cavan.
“On Saturday afternoon my sheep were attacked by dogs, six were killed and six were injured, the following morning a dog returned and killed another one, and one of the injured died,” Scott wrote in a Facebook post.
“I have lost eight ewes that were due to lamb and the end of the month. My other ewes are terrified and will probably abort their lambs.”
The Texel-Suffolk cross ewes were worth around €200 each, Daphne told the Irish Farmers Journal. One of the ewes killed was a pedigree Hampshire Down. Daphne believes that more than one dog carried out the attack because the sheep were scattered among three or four different fields afterwards.
“There’s still five ewes in what I call ICU. One had to be sown all the way from the mouth down the neck, the dog just missed the windpipe. There’s one that still hasn’t gotten up.”
In total there were 40 ewes in the field before the attack, those still alive have been housed. Daphne has had sheep in those fields for the last two years and there were no problems, now she says she can’t let stock out again until the dogs are captured.
“We got a glimpse of the dog on Sunday morning. It was cream coloured, a big dog, something like a husky or a Labrador. The dog warden said that we should follow the dog home.”
Ad campaign
In recent weeks the IFA has called for an ad campaign to be rolled out which would encourage responsible dog ownership. Between 20 and 30 livestock worrying cases were reported to the dog warden in Louth last year.
“Normally in the aftermath of a sheep worrying incident we’d generally see one or more dead sheep.” Louth vet Gareth Shine told RTE’s Morning Ireland on Tuesday. “That’s only the start of the problem because the rest of the flock will have been affected and sometimes months later you will be faced with sheep having abortions.”
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