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On my lunchtime ride today I rode through a field of sheep on a decent track, and I found two sheep with a hind leg that looked severely injured - holding it right up to their body - and another with an injured front leg. All in about 20 yards. At the end of the field the gate was hanging off its hinges. All three were sitting on the track at first until I rode by.
a) wtf? and
b) should I have called the farmer? Or will be be checking up on them himself?
Yeah farmer would have wanted to know.
I believe that it is a legal duty to check sheep once a day. No idea where I heard that, but if it is the case, it won't be long before the farmer knows.
It sounds like foot rot. Sheep are very prone to it and plodding around in the wet brings it on. Difficult to tell at a glance if the farmer is letting everything go to rack & ruin.
Sheep ailments are very "binary". They're either fine or dead. Nothing inbetween. Except foot rot.
The field was opposite his house.. but it didn't occur to me to knock on the door I thought I'd pjhone when I got home - but how on earth would I have found his number?
I blame lack of carbs for poor brain function.
Search the name of the farm.
I've rescued three sheep; two stuck in bogs and one with a horn trapped in a gate. My karma is high with sheep.
I too have saved three sheep - one trapped on barbed wire (cut free with my multi-tool during a ride), the other two in the field adjoining my old house - one had it's head stuck in a fence, the other was a riggwelter.
I rescued a small lamb from a fast flowing stream.
They don't half soak up a lot of water.
Years ago I ushered a cow off the road and back through a hole in the fence (it had made?).
More recently I spotted a cow in a nearby river. All his mates were standing atop the bank having a laugh so I summoned the farmer.
My karma is high with sheep.
My cowma is high 😆
While on the subject of our bovine friends, my FIL once returned to his car to find part of it flattened by a dead cow that had fallen down the bank 😯
Had to save a sheep on a nearby farm after the flock was spooked by a knob on motorcross bike and one ended up falling over on a hilly slope and getting stuck upside down between a bush and a rock. Was quite amusing.
Nearly lost one of our lambs a couple of weeks ago when she managed to wrap herself up in the electric fence and was strangling herself. Fortunately it was off, unlike when her mother did it last year and I got home to find an exhausted sheep twitching every second.
re: the legs/feet - probably a bit of foot rot. Quick trim and a spray should see them right.
I saw a sheep on it's back and mentioned it to the farmer as he was a few fields down on a quad. He said that if they lay on their backs they can't clear their lungs and can drown. However they're too stupid to really try and just voluntarily die. He drove up to it beeping the horn and it managed to get up and run away.
Colossally stupid animals, very difficult to stop from choosing to die in stupid ways from what I hear.
may be foot rot where an insect eats into hoof, and causing the poor thing suffering, or its got a broken or damaged leg, either way notify farmer, as theyre his product to sell and a damaged product doesnt sell.
and any time ive helped an animal in distress something nice always happens soon after, eg they seem to bring good luck
Sheep are stupid. Farm next door raised them for years and now given up on them. Farmer told me once that,once born, all sheep are trying to find new ways to die.
Happens all the time here. I've lost count of the amount of sheep I have had to help because our shepard can't be bothered. The last one I told him about at 09:30 on one particular day didn't get looked at until 19:00. And that is after a couple of reminders. The final straw was when the ewe finally had its uppermost eye pecked out put by crows and it's stomach being pulled through its skin. Her poor lambs saw it happening in front of them. In the end I had to drag it in to a barn to put it in a pen. By the time I returned with my gun it was finally dealt with.
"sheep are born to die, they are happiest when they are dead, the trick to sheep farming is beating them to it"
words of wisdom given to my mother by an old sheep farmer when one of her sheep died two days into owning her farm.
"There is nothing more dangerous than a clever sheep" 😀
Sheep are dangerous...
An an Exmoor ride one time, we were stopped by the farmer going up a farm track because his lad on a quad was herding some cows down towards the farm. The gates were at the top of the sloping fields, as he said, and after every gate they'd run down into the field. So would we mind a/ waiting and b/ lining up along the top of the field so as they came through the gate, they'd see us, and stay up there rather than dispersing.
The only thing missing was the trumpet fanfare. Six ****ing huge things with horns arrived, took one look at us and did what the hell they pleased. I was stood with 28 lbs of aluminium between me and 600kg of beef and a Pamplona style death. They dispersed into the field, and the farmer shut the gate behind them. We sort of shrugged in a 'wtf!?' kind of way. 'yeah, I thought they might do that' was his answer.....
Never got the skids off my chammy pad yet.
We have 140 of them at the Farm, they never cease to amaze with their "idiosyncrasies"
Sounds like foot rot to me too.
Jolly Farmer probably knows about it, I'd not bother him. 😉
Full carcass right across the trail on Bowderdale at the weekend stripped down to the bone, so not sure how long it had been there plus what appeared to be a sheep graveyard off piste at the bottom of the valley - would that be farmers chosen disposal method or just sheep gathering to die together in one spot?