Nearly 1,000 dog attacks on livestock have been investigated in NI over the past seven years, according to statistics published by DAERA.

The dataset, which runs from April 2017, shows that 938 cases of livestock worrying and 22 cases of dogs being set on livestock have been reported over the period.

In 2023/24, there were 147 investigations into livestock worrying, which is up from 122 cases in 2022/23 and 125 incidents the year before that.

Despite the large number of livestock worrying cases reported to authorities, the figures show that very few investigations lead to prosecutions.

There was just one successful prosecution for livestock worrying in NI during 2023/24, with two incidents leading to prosecution in 2022/23 and four prosecutions were successful in the previous year.

The dataset shows that the highest number of prosecutions for livestock worrying occurred in 2020/21 when seven cases were successful. Overall, there have been 28 successful prosecutions since April 2017.

While prosecutions have declined in recent years, there has not been the same drop in the number of livestock worrying cases being considered for trial.

There were 13 cases considered for prosecution last year, which is the same total that occurred in both 2020/21 and 2021/22. A total of 19 cases were considered for prosecution in 2022/23.

Enforcement

Aside from prosecutions, other forms of enforcement are being used on dog owners by authorities in NI following attacks on livestock.

There were 42 “control conditions” added to dog licences last year due to livestock attacks and five “formal cautions” were issued due to livestock worrying in 2023/24.

Overall, the DAERA statistics show that incidents involving livestock make up around 10% of all dog attacks reported in NI.

Just under half of the 9,711 incidents investigated over the past seven years relate to attacks on people and around 40% are attacks on pets.