Farmer left to bear costs after two sheep killed in dog attack

A Waterford sheep farmer has been left “hopeless” having to bear the costs after two of his sheep were killed in a dog attack.

The attack took place in Ballylaneen in the early hours of Saturday morning 4 January. Ten more sheep were injured in the attack.

Young pedigree Texel breeder Dermot Behan said that a vet spent three hours at his farm the next day, stitching up wounds and caring for sheep with broken legs.

“It’s fairly hopeless and you’ve to bear the cost yourself. The vet bill for stitching them up I’d say is going to be crazy. He was there for the bones of three or four hours,” he said.

“They’re all pedigree, I’ve thousands [of euro] put into this. There were ewes I got that I paid €3,000 for one of them and her leg is all destroyed.”

Behan said that two other farms were affected by dog attacks on the same night within 2km of this incident.

One flock had broken through a wire and fled to a drain, while another farmer had around 15 cull ewes injured that required stitches.

Behan said that on the morning that he found his sheep, he needed to retrieve many from a nearby forest.

Pinned in a corner

“When they were attacking my sheep, they pinned them down in a corner; you can see the ground marks. Then they hunted them into the woods and in there they were ripping the skin and the wool off them. You can see it all over the woods,” he added.

“I’d say that’s where they broke their legs because I could barely walk through the woods myself.”

‘Helpless’

This incident occurred while Behan’s flock was grazing land for his uncle on an outfarm, around 15km from his house.

Although the attack was reported to gardaí, Behan believes there is very little chance that there will be a resolution.

“We’re helpless, [there’s] nothing we can really do about it unless you’re standing in the field with [the dogs]. We can’t even catch the dog that done it today, we would have had to catch him doing it,” Behan added.

“All of my donor ewes, the best ewes were the ones that were attacked. I took embryos off them in the summer and flushed 10 of them, they’re the ones that are damaged. They’re all back in-lamb now, but one was aborting yesterday, it can be hard to tell.”

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