They poo enormous amounts absolutely everywhere, and have eaten every plant possible," she said.
"My neighbours think it's hysterical."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-21202166
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Nice bright little flock that. Stolen and abandoned perhaps. There are some wicked farmers about.
The ones here are fewer in number, but they wear cloth caps and lounge around smoking roll-ups. They belong in Newmarket, heaven knows how they got down here.
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Bah!
I was driving not too far from their this morning (01:30) and it was absolutely freezing!
I guess if they were being stolen the thieves gave up because of the cold?
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Couldn't find a buyer probably. Or given to some halfwit to transport and somehow got abandoned. They must be worth a few quid actually (for the wool alone) but farmers can be surprisingly insouciant at markets as well as the other thing, insisting on the very last penny, and are quite often drunk.
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You'd insist on the last penny as well if you had half a clue of the economics of raising sheep.
FYI, the average British sheep is calculated to cost £1.79 per kilo liveweight just to feed alone; add in vet bills and medications, cost of running farm, percentage allowed for stock loss due to illness or predation, and you soon realise that it's hardly a get rich quick scheme.
We also have the joys of Schmallenberg virus (Google it) which threatens to decimate the breeding flocks.
Meanwhile, in a meat processing plant near you, containers are arriving from New Zealand, full of dead sheep in kit form. This is not frozen; the container is filled with a (presumably inert) gas before shipping, which is then removed before opening the container. Note that this meat has already been dead for up to a couple of months. Meat is then processed and packed, sent out to British supermarkets and sold there for less than the British stuff.
if anyone can tell me (without the usual predictable anti-farmer prejudices) how this is possible given the cost of fuel I'd love to know.
Last edited by: Harleyman on Sat 26 Jan 13 at 08:42
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Quite right HM. Sheep also have a reputation for having more ways of coming to grief than any other farm animal.
The value of the fleece must be fairly trivial too. The last one the boss bought cost her £5 at a craft fair so that wasn't exactly wholesale.
You can see why they get rustled. There's next to no money in growing your own.
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>> You'd insist on the last penny as well if you had half a clue of the economics of raising sheep.
I have a good friend who has raised sheep, pigs, cattle and various arable crops like his father before him, and in years gone by I sometimes helped him move them down a stretch of main A road from one lot of fields to another. So I do have some idea of the difficulties farmers face, although not an extremely detailed one. Another farmer near here was once reduced to stealing his own pigs to prevent them from being seized by the bank, poor fellow. My friend and cousin-in-law, who is something of an operator, has other strings to his bow and doesn't seem to have any livestock at the moment except a few chickens. But farmers with no land of their own and no other business must be having a hard time of it.
I insist though that farmers as a species are often very offhand about their own property. Witness the one in the case being discussed here, who had simply 'lost' the pictured flock and took some time to realise it was missing, by his account anyway.
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>> They must be worth a few quid actually (for the wool alone)
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The wool is worth very little.
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In recent years the cost of shearing them was more than the value of the fleece, although I understand the situation has improved slightly.
A friend was a sheep farmer - reckoned they had an ambition to find the most ludicrous way of dying and could jump a little higher than any fence or wall surrounding them. He also reckoned to never call a vet for a sick sheep - the call out charge was more than the value of the beast.
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I think I'd be ever so slightly miffed at the BiB for dumping them in my garden..
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If someone dumped sheep in my garden they would suddenly "break through the fence" and vanish overnight.
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Same here, and as someone who doesn't eat meat I wouldn't be keeping one for myself.
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"...who doesn't eat meat I wouldn't be keeping one for myself"
Dress it up in stockings and suspenders and keep it in the bedroom.
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>> Dress it up in stockings and suspenders and keep it in the bedroom.
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Stop telling everyone my secrets.
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We often get sheep and cattle wandering along the road - we get paranoid about keeping the gates shut because if half a dozen cows get in overnight, there is no garden left by morning.
Farmers don't really care about keeping their livestock secured - they rarely wander far.
In my early days here I used to dutifully try to round them up and return them to a likely field. But I got small thanks for the effort so long ago stopped bothering. I just edge past them in the road and let someone else sort them out.
Once on a dark night I literally bumped into a bull with a dozen cows out on the road. I only nudged it, but quickly reversed and went another way round before it had time to get cross.
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>>
>> Once on a dark night I literally bumped into a bull with a dozen cows
>> out on the road. I only nudged it, but quickly reversed and went another way
>> round before it had time to get cross.
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Ten years ago my niece's boyfriend was killed when he hit a cow while travelling between Haverfordwest and Cardigan. They are pretty solid beasts and having no understanding of their habits I would never enter a field with cattle in it.
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>>having no understanding of their habits I would never enter a field with cattle in it.
Understandable, but it would be tricky to go for a walk round here without some sort of cow encounter.
There have been couple of incidents near here in which people were knocked about by cows. One was actually the owner of the cows and she was trampled and had a broken leg I think.
In both cases they were cows with calves, and the victims had a dog with them, which seems usual in this type of attack
I had a scary encounter with about 30 young bullocks a few years ago. They seemed curious, and started moving towards us. Then running, eventually at the bovine equivalent of a gallop.
Having no choice, being in the middle of a big field, the boss and I stood our ground. Amazingly they stopped very suddenly only a few yards away and just looked at us, seemingly with great interest.
I keep thinking I should carry a stick to bat any aggressive ones on the nose if necessary. I fancy a blackthorn thumbstick but never come across one.
Last edited by: Manatee on Sat 26 Jan 13 at 15:46
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Can't thoil that Ted. £38 postage on top too! Might have to be a chestnut.
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I've bin charged by heifers many times up on Bodmin moor, 'the trick' is to turn n' face em, hold your hands up high and then SHOUT out loud.
Never turn your back on em, and if ye have a dog on a lead, let im orf, pronto!
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When I was a teenager (long long time ago) a friend was travelling on the Aberdeen to Banff road at night and hit a cow. As far as I recall he was the only one to survive.
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Please, claim these sheep. - Armel Coussine
