24/06/2025
🐶KEEP DOGS ON LEADS AROUND LIVESTOCK!! 🐶
Don’t put your dogs, yourself, farmer and livestock in a situation that will end badly. No matter how ‘well trained’ your dog(s) might be they still have their own brain so put them on the lead!
After a devastating livestock worrying incident, justice was delivered – £11,500 recovered for affected farmers.
In late December 2024, two dogs caused the deaths of several sheep, impacting multiple farmers in the south of the county.
As you can imagine, an incident like this had a massive impact on the community.
Livestock worrying has a serious effect on farmers, who not only lose animals immediately, but may continue to suffer losses weeks or months later. Shock can cause complications with births, especially if ewes are in lamb at the time of the incident.
In this case, that’s exactly what happened. Several sheep from different farms were killed by the dogs, and the shock caused further damage and losses afterward.
Not only did this cost farmers valuable in-lamb ewes, but also time and money repairing fencing, removing the affected livestock, and more.
With help from the community, we quickly identified a suspect and carried out a full investigation and interview.
The suspect made a full and frank admission, which allowed us to explore alternative outcomes to prosecution. A court case would likely have resulted in a maximum fine of £1,000, with each farmer needing to pursue civil claims for full compensation.
Instead, the suspect complied with a series of conditions, including full compensation of nearly £11,500 to the affected farmers, and specific measures relating to the dogs.
➡️ Please help us prevent future incidents. Keep dogs on leads near livestock.
Together, we can protect our rural communities. 🐾👩🌾🐑
