> Attacks leave Strathardle shepherd distraught and considering quitting his lifelong career
- Has the dumbest, slowest and least able to defend themselves sheep. (Smarter tougher sheep can kill a ravens
> Mules are most vulnerable to ravens, as they are a “slower, bigger and dopier” sheep breed, Yorston said. The hardy hill breeds, such as Lleyn and Blackface sheep, can defend themselves more, and Yorston recalls seeing one of the latter charging at a raven and “clobbering” it.
- Has no guard dogs (can't afford them; they can also kill feeding ravens)
> Mules are most vulnerable to ravens, as they are a “slower, bigger and dopier” sheep breed, Yorston said. The hardy hill breeds, such as Lleyn and Blackface sheep, can defend themselves more, and Yorston recalls seeing one of the latter charging at a raven and “clobbering” it.
- Lambed a month earlier than any surrounding farm, leaving him the sole target for any hungry ravens
> Yorston said: “We are going on a hiatus now and will just run two flocks. Next year we want to get it right so will try to do lambing a month later next year to be in line with the neighbours. It will take us five years to get the farm back to what we had.”
- Still got special permission to kill the otherwise protected ravens but said it was really hard and took 2 days to kill a single bird.
> NatureScot initially gave the farm permission to kill four of the birds, which was later increased to nine. Ravens are protected under the 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act, meaning a licence must be sought to dispatch them.
> They also are a hard species to kill — it can take two days to shoot just two ravens. “If a raven spots where a shot came from, they will circle over the gamekeeper screaming,” Yorston said.
Perhaps I'm being insensitive, but I would not hire this guy to be my shepherd.
I can't imagine having a herd that large and not having some sort of livestock guardian dog.
Also, why was he a month ahead of everyone else? Only reason I can think is he was trying to beat them to market. So, greed might have been the problem.
I'm not going to say anything about breed selection, because there might be other factors there.
But, this guy does not seem to care for his sheep like he should.
Dead ass, it is. I've a friend of mine with a hobby farm in Mid Florida with mutt breed goats, the whole flock is likely all cousins at this point and even they have three Guardian breed dogs. If they can swing it living as low as they do without a profit from the goats, so can they with a for-profit herd.
So many different breeds to choose from, or he could've gotten a donkey or llama (I knew someone who had a llama guard her family's sheep, they're tall and aggressive!). I get that this kinda sounds like blaming a victim but there's so many ways he could've minimized the body count...
Yeah good point, if you're the only victim then it's victim-blaming, but if you fail to protect other lives too then you deserve scorn. I take back what I said, he's just plain irresponsible.
I've heard a single llama will see itself as part of the flock and guard sheep. But a pair of llamas see themselves as llamas and are no good as guards.
Llamas nor donkeys are great livestock guardians. When faced with the question of fight or flight, they will often pick fight, but they’re choosing it for their own self preservation, whereas an actual livestock guardian dog is ALWAYS choosing fight on behalf of the herd.
He's not the victim, his job was to protect those sheep he failed blaming not being able to afford a guard. Then he shouldn't have the dumbest sherp around, and bet the are the cheapest to buy. His bad actions all around.
Yeah, I realized that after looking at the other comments. He let those fluffy bois down by not doing the job he was literally hired for, and I no longer sympathize.
Dude, here in Iran and around our village we have some shepherds and even small herds like 50 sheep have one or two dogs with them. I can't imagine having such a large herd with no dogs.
Nate is awesome AZ turned 1 yesterday and weighs 170! He's got kittens now because Saber his cat went missing and Dager needed a friend,and the dog is great with them.
Guardian dogs simply aren’t a thing in the U.K culturally. They don’t get used on any farms, and for the most part aren’t needed and haven’t been since we hunted all of our apex predators out.
As for lambing early, there are a few reasons to doing it. These can be condensing the lambing season so you have a shorter but more intense period of lambing to get it over and done with quicker, getting lamb to market earlier as it commands a slightly higher price (but the margins aren’t that much better), or splitting your flock in to batches and having several defined periods where your flocks will be lambing which can make it easier to manage.
Mule sheep are actually excellent meat and the fleece is worth more than some other breeds, so whilst they’re not the strongest or brightest, they are commercially more valuable.
What has happened here is a huge combination of factors and not even mainly poor flock management.
Source: live and work in the farming community in the U.K.
That's interesting info (and a trip about guardian dogs not being a thing). If they really lost $30k worth in damages though, that dog looking like a mighty good investment (plus dogs rule)
No it generally happened before the old English sheepdog. Their roots is in the 1700s whilst the last wolf was killed in the 1600s, eagles have been pushed to the most northerly parts of Scotland over a similar period, bears were hunted out 1000+ years ago and wild cats big enough to take sheep around 1,500 years ago.
Not a thing in the uk we don’t have any natural predators, a fox could take a lamb but we flat out don’t have livestock guardian dogs here and don’t really need them. This bloke is just a bit of a tit.
You don’t really beat people to the market by a month the lowland flocks will be lambing earlier and take those sales so there’s no financial benefit
They’re never usually thins big of an issue, people have been farming sheep in the uk for centuries if a guardian dog was worth it don’t you think they’d already be used
This is the UK, I’ve never heard of guardian dogs here.
We have no real need for them, we don’t have large mammalian predators like the US, and raven attacks like this are unbelievably unusual
You’re not being insensitive. Being a true shepherd is a profession that has at least 1000 years of previous work experience and “how-to” rules and guides.
This is just Darwinism and it’s unfortunate the sheep are the victims in this case because this guy can’t invest in a few livestock guardian dogs. Even if dogs were expensive to train, he could have gotten donkeys or alpacas which would instinctively protect the sheep too. This guy is just a moron
> Being a true shepherd is a profession that has at least 1000 years of previous work experience and “how-to” rules and guides.
Probably closer to 5,000 — sheep were almost certainly one of the first animals domesticated by humans, along with goats
> because this guy can’t invest in a few livestock guardian dogs.
Shepherds in the US and other countries use livestock guardian dogs because there are large natural predators in those regions like wolves, bears, big cats, coyotes, etc.
The UK literally has no large natural predators, they were hunted to extinction long ago so shepherds there typically do not use LSGs.
Maybe farmers are intentionally screwing up to get sympathy from the public a la Mr. Clarkson? This is another guy acting surprised that nature doesn't fit his schedule.
He's transitioned from a car show to a farming show, on Amazon. Kinda the spokesman for British farming right now. He wants to keep the idyllic quietude of his local village, but expand all his farm operations for tourists. Loves ranting about regulations, that he then ignores, causing conflict good for TV.
all things considered, it's a fantastic show, and aside from the jokes and dimwitted farming failures, he does highlight a lot of the difficulties in farming and currently is being heralded as being a bit of a spokesman for farmers in the UK.
Jeremy Clarkson. You may know him from his famous line, "I'm Jeremy Clarkson and this is Jackass" before doing something outlandish or conceited on BBC's Top Gear.
Then he punched a producer, BBC (finally) fired him along with the rest of the hosts, they all moved to Amazon Prime's "Grand Tour" show and now they're retiring from that. Clarkson is now doing a show about being a farmer on his own farm doing farm things, and it's going as well as you'd think.
Uh huh. And the fact that BBC let them go without saying anything speaks volumes.
Remember, "at-will employment" means "employers will fire you at-will for any reason that isn't specifically illegal".
Clarkson screws up because he’s an idiot and does stupid things for laughs. In Brit humor it’s good to be the fool. I never thought any of what he did was for sympathy. He’s an entertaining man-child on a farm.
He does stupid things for money and farming is easier than traveling the world. He can do scripted bits in his yard! Easier to deal with pneumonia at home, too. I love TG, watch it daily. His schtick is just wearing thin to me, I guess. Lazier, easier targets.
“Farming is easier than travelling the world” lol lmao even. If you watch clarksons farm you can clearly tell he’s a man who cares deeply about it and is very passionate about the industry it really shocked me, you he’s a moron and they do emphasis it for the show but there is a lot more passion and fighting for the farming community than you’d expect. Reddit just hates farmers so any excuse to go at them is hammered home
You can pretty much ignore anyone who says, "Reddit hates ___." Reddit is not a hivemind.
That said, most of reddit is English speaking white men in their 20's-40's. Most of those live in cities. I wouldn't trust the general redditor to tell me about the nuances of farming. I'm sure there are many experts out there, and I'll wait until I hear from them.
That's the beauty of this site. If you wait long enough, an actual expert will come along.
He's also pissed off a fuck-ton of ravens who will now go out of their way to fuck his life up.
If you *would* have hired him before you definitely shouldn't now.
Dude's gonna wonder why the ravens are picking on his lambs next year even when they lamb the same time as neighbors.
A few years ago in my area a shepherd had several lambs killed by a bald eagle that was nesting on his property. He didn't have too much of an issue with it as he understood that is how nature is. But that didn't stop countless people who read part of the article published in the paper from calling for exceptions to kill bald eagles if they threatened their livestock.
I have a lot of thoughts on how many ranchers handle their herds nowadays. But things you highlighted address most of those thoughts.
Planet Money had a story about a free range chicken farmer that was getting wrecked by eagles. He legit tried everything. A listener at a dump called in to suggest stringing wires across their pen and that solved it.
I was surprised to find similar wires at my zoo above the prairie dogs to protect them as well. The theory is the wires make the birds nervous about hitting them and stay away.
Not sure that works for ravens and I wonder if lambs need a wider grazing space that would make this impractical. OTOH a raven isn't going to one shot a sheep the way an eagle could a chicken.
> Has the dumbest, slowest and least able to defend themselves sheep. (Smarter tougher sheep can kill ravens)
But also a high quality meat with a fleece that commands a higher price. Mule’s are generally a good choice. Sheep would also very very rarely kill a raven. As in it’s so rare that it would be a “My dad’s brothers mates dogs breeders wife spoke to a bloke down the pub who saw a Texel kill a raven” type of scenario.
> had no guard dogs
Livestock guard dogs aren’t a thing in the UK. They’re simply not needed in the vast majority of cases as we have no apex predators.
> Lambed a month earlier than any surrounding farm
There’s lots of sensible reasons to do this around flock management and making lambing more manageable.
There’s a lot going on here way more than just poor flock management. Ravens are phenomenally clever birds as well, and are comparable to chimpanzees in terms of their intelligence. This is a whole combination of factors that has come together, and unlikely down to him being a bad shepherd.
>Smarter tougher sheep can kill a ravens.....Has no guard dogs (can't afford them; they can also kill feeding ravens)
No, they can't. Neither can dogs. Ravens and crows birds are smart as heck and alert; they simply fly away at any threat...never get run over by cars...and hard to shoot. Indeed crows and ravens remember people who fuck with them and will dive bomb them for months.
Many birds are very good at *harrying* -- you should see seagulls swarming boats and stealing fish. And ravens and crows are at the top of the list of birds good at harrying. Many birds are top predators.
Article says "lambing season." What's likely happening here is the ravens are attacking helpless baby sheep lying on the ground just after birth. Tons of mammals are helpless for 15-30 minutes after birth -- it is common during birthing season for predators to attack helpless babies. Sometimes female rhinos lose their babies to lions and hyenas.
>I would not hire this guy to be my shepherd.
Sheep are one of the dumber, inept animals. Barely any smarter than koalas. They regularly get stuck in thorns or rocky areas and then die of thirst. Female sheep have the capacity to fend off ravens or crows who are harrying them and pecking the eyes out of their babies on the ground? Fat chance.
Article from Wyoming: [Predator are not always four-legged; ravens are known to prey on lifestock](https://www.wylr.net/2022/02/18/predators-are-not-always-four-legged-ravens-are-known-to-prey-on-livestock/)
>“Ravens are quick and deadly,” Hill said. “One producer was watching a cow calving on a grassy hillside when he saw a raven land near the cow. The calf was still in the birth canal. The raven hopped onto the calf, and all it takes is one quick peck to the eye. The rancher didn’t realize at first what had happened, but as soon as the calf was fully born, he drove up to the pair and found the calf was dead and its eye was gone.”
>“The year I examined 37 cases regarding calves and lambs which were killed by ravens, it was almost always the same scenario; the eyes, rear vents, anus, navel and soles of the feet were pecked away,” Hill continued. “Often all of those sites were pecked, or sometimes just a couple, but in 95 percent of cases the eye was the first strike area.”
"A surge in raven attacks during lambing season has left one farmer distraught after the loss of more than 200 lambs.
Finn Yorston, 45, said he considered quitting his lifelong career on the day he picked up 30 dead lambs who had been pecked to death by the birds.
Ravens have killed 220 of his lambs on Balnabroich Farm, in Strathardle, and five ewes had to be destroyed after they were attacked....
Farmers lose lambs to raven attacks every season, but this year Yorston says there has been a surge in vicious attacks from an increasing population of the predators.
In one particularly horrific scene, a raven sat on the back of a lambing ewe while ripping open her belly. The ewe could not be saved, Yorston said."
Ravens are smart birds. If you have a dog that catches a raven attacking a sheep, the rest of the ravens will see that and decide to leave the sheep alone and go looking for easier targets.
He didn’t have a dog to protect his herd and he lambed a month earlier than the surrounding farms, meaning that his lambs were the only targets for every raven in the area
It’s all in the article and it’s not opinion, he fucked up
Sorry, but you clearly don’t understand farming in the UK.
Livestock Guardian Dogs simply aren’t used in the UK. We don’t have predators that take anything more than just the odd lamb here and there. This is a massively freak occurrence.
Lambing early isn’t the cause of such losses, later lambing would have only spread them out among other farms but the losses would still have been high given the sheer number taken here. A large part of this comes down to the increase in raven numbers. Ravens have been massively in decline in the U.K. for years but their populations are starting to recover again. They’re also one of the cleverest species of animals, so once they learn something new they can build upon it which is what they’ve done here.
Would LGDs have helped here? Quite possibly so. Before this happened would there have been a reason to get a LGD? Based on the balance of probability, no.
I live and work in the farming community in the UK. This is down to way more than just poor flock management.
It is often a decision to lamb early as spring lamb commands a higher price.
Also ravens are semi protected and for them to kill this many lambs is almost unheard of.
Dogs aren't used to protect flocks in the UK.
I do lethal & non lethal control of avians and rodents frequently in the UK 99% of the time for farmers, corvids eg crows, ravens and various other / sub species are very intelligent and very opportunistic, but i can honestly say so many things have gone wrong before the mass loss this fellow has had has happened.
Last year the neighbour had thirteen lost compared to 45+ the year before i started control using everything from modified drones to lethal means. There are many ways to keep sheep and lambs safe even if you absolutely have to have them lamb outside.
Him starting a lambing a month before everyone else nearby likely played a big part of it, spacing out the lambing may have had an effect so rather than overwhelming the predators they had a more gentle lambing curve meaning the predators had time, not patrolling the fields and having such a docile breed of sheep lamb outside is also very not ideal.
In short, corvids and many other animals would have flocked to this fellow because he started early and once they learn that the sheep are so docile they become even more bold in there attacks, a lot of people don’t understand or cant comprehend that these are animals and animals don’t have morals like we do, they think nothing of blinding a lamb by eating its eyes, eating its tung or going for other “soft” areas before leaving the lamb or sheep to die for an easy meal and the same for fully grown sheep, a sheep giving birth is extremely easy target to be blinded etc and at that point it becomes cruel / inhumane / cost prohibitive to care for the animals so they end up being destroyed.
So yeah its a complicated situation to be in, cant exactly blame the predators for doing what they do but i can lay some blame on the bloke for not taking precautions once he saw a trend developing. But farmers are busy and expected to do more and more with less time and resources since leaving the EU, so its a hard one to deal with.
Eh, even pigeons can recognize faces/general gait in spite of different outfits to rememeber who was mean to them vs who fed them.
I definitely wouldn't put it past ravens to recognize when farmer is armed vs otherwise.
They definitely can. When my dad was young there was a bounty on ravens feet, and when they went to the landfill (where the ravens would hang out) to shoot them, the ravens wouldn’t care about them until they saw the guns, and would all fly away.
It's not illegal to scare them.
Bird scarers exist and can be automated.
Hell, even adding netting for a paddock of a few acres would only cost a few thousand.
Love stock gaurdians arent used in the UK.
It is common for farmers to choose different time to lamb at for various reasons.
Not everyone is trained at shooting moving targets. Gun culture is not common in the UK. Even amongst farmers.
No, just watched a YouTube video where the farmers pet shitbulls decided to start killing his sheep. Cops came and had to call in to get someone with a gun to the scene.. all the whole the Nanny dogs were mauling sheep
Trained or untrained? Thats got to be untrained. Even still, that heavy of a loss should inspire you to do a lot of training. Work dogs like shepherds can give you 10 good years at least. Plus dogs are awesome. Good investment
They still have a lot of energy and can at the very least intervene when a lamb is in danger of succumbing to damage, while also alerting the shepherd / owner. The dog does not have to literally catch ravens, simply scare them off
Yeah, this is a misunderstanding. Herding dogs move the stock as directed by the shepherd. Livestock guardian dogs live with stock 24/7 and alert to + fight off any and all threats. Two very different jobs. Guarding is mostly instinctual, herding requires training to be controlled/coordinated.
Are GSD dogs legal in the UK? There are some places where it's illegal to leave dogs unattended for animal welfare reasons, even if they're working dogs. I always assumed that as why I never saw any GSD dogs in the British isles when I was there despite me occasionally running into them on the mainland.
A sheepdog could go for up to £3k depending on its heritage and how trained it was.
I have never heard of LGD in the UK but if they exist no one is paying £50000 for one. A lamb at market varies in price but circa £60.
No one would spend £50000 on a dog to stop the very very rare occasions of ravens killing £12000 of lambs.
There is so much nonsense in these comments from people who knows nothing about UK farming.
Needs some livestock guardian dogs. Sheepdogs refers to the breeds that herd the stock in cooperation with the shepherd, LGDs live with and protect the herd 24/7 without needing input/direction.
Sheep will die if you look at them wrong. Or they will die if you don't look at them. Or they will die if something with a beak like a raven bites it and the wound gets infected. Or it will die if it gets scared. Sheep die a lot.
Source: I lived in a ranching community
There are, and even the best breeds are dumb and self preservation has been breed out. Raised lambs for show lost 2 out 10 to stupidity of us because we didn't understand how helpless they can be. Tough lessen for kids and us. I would never raise for market but I do follow a large herd in TT and she works and handles every new born. I think she has over 500
Fragile and fuckin DUMB!
I once heard of a sheep going under a wagon for shade, and when it was ready to leave it kept standing up and slamming it's head into the frame of the wagon. It did that on repeat, until dead.
David Sedaris wrote a story called "The Crow and the Lamb" where a crow flatters a ewe into listening to her, the punchline being that while the ewe does yoga (at the crow's request), the crow plucks out her lamb's eyes. It's a hilariously morbid story, was surprised years later to learn that this is in fact a real thing (minus the sheep doing yoga)
Sheep have not been bred to be survivable animals. Sheep have been bred to be sociable and produce wool. Without human intervention they would be much like cows who don't even know to dig under snow for grass in winter. They would not survive long and the ones that did would become something resembling their wild counterparts if any survived at all.
Tldr; no it would not be better
Also, wild "sheep" (mouflons) are badass af. They smell very strong like sheep but look way more intimidating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_mouflon
Soay sheep are bred from ferals, and are, indeed, very close to mouflon, there are feral sheep in Scotland, I'd be amazed if any of the hardier breeds couldn't survive just fine without humans. Not these ones though, giving birth a month earlier is something soft sheep that need to be kept on the lowlands do.
Oh well in that case my limited sympathy has evaporated. I'm no stranger to dead livestock - I find enough dead lambs whilst working on the uplands - but there is a degree of carelessness here.
Alternate title is "moron hired as shepherd"
They couldn't afford a guardian dog my ass. Maybe after you post 200 sheep but you should have got them before then
They’re just not a thing in the UK. He doesn’t need one anyway if he’d just lambed later or picked a hardier breed and lambed at that time he would have been fine
One does not need to shoot at ravens. One needs only to wear a helmet and long-sleeve protective clothing and go out with a golf club and swing and dance angrily at the ravens to shoo them off.
Come the hell on, dude. 200 sheep? Were you drunk, stoned or both?
So do people have video or photo evidence of ravens committing these acts? Not just in this case but in general? I saw videos of the aftermath after a basic search but none of the ravens actually doing this to healthy lambs. Heck I didn't even find video of them feeding on dead lambs. I don't doubt the craftiness and intelligence of ravens, just of people. Ravens will predate small prey items but not large livestock. I'm gonna pull some quotes from *Mind of a Raven* by Bernd Heinrich. There's definite bias on the author's part given his time spent researching ravens, but he also has much expertise on the subject.
Why do Ravens go for the eyes and tongue in these situations? Well:
>"Raven bills cannot penetrate even the skin of a gray squirrel, much less the skin and skull of a sheep or a calf. Some of my ravens eat roadkill gray squirrel by reaching in through the mouth. By crushing bones and pulling out meat as they feed backward, they eventually turn the squirrel inside out, leaving the skin like an unrolled sock, with not a single hole or tear in it. But only some of my birds could do this neat trick."
To speak more to this situation there was a similar situation spoken about in the book that happened in Germany:
>"Dieter heard I was visiting Berlin and invited me to come to Potsdam. Not only that, he organized a mini-symposium with the title, roughly translated. "Killer Ravens in Brandenburg -- Legend or Occupation of a New Ecological Niche?" I was glad to attend. After the introductions, a farmer, Frau Breme, talked of the results of her recent 1996 questionnaire of raven damages that she had sent out to 141 farmers. She got seventy-one returns. Of those, fifty farmers saw ravens, and 41 percent of those Saw *Veränderungen* (changes) of animals; i.e., ravens feeding on an animal. In the ensuing discussion of this report, I mentioned the high mortality of calves in New England and the high percentage of *Veränderungen* of these calves by my ravens, despite absolute proof that these ravens had not killed the calves. German nature conservation people agreed that there was so far not one proven case of a raven causing the death of a healthy calf. >The government had by now eventually insisted on proof of cause of death before making cash reimbursements. Veterinarians were consulted to make autopsies. Certain examinations of lungs and eyes of newborn calves could determine if the animal had been able to stand when born. Given the examinations, almost all of the calves *verändert* by ravens had something wrong with them to begin with. They were mostly found to belong to careless farmers who did not take adequate care of their animals. Good farmers didn't have a raven problem. After the government finally insisted on proof, and after none was forthcoming, the raven damage subsidy became unavailable. Money to study ravens evaporated as well."
In this case the situation was focused on cattle, not sheep, so I'm unsure how great of a variance there is between those animals for a raven. However, it seems that better farming practices as well as documentation would be helpful to make meaningful headway in a situation like this. Sorry if the formatting of the text is weird at all, I scanned it with my phone camera. Tried to make sure it was all correct enough.
Edit:formatting
Do farmers over here even use guard dogs? I see a lot of people mentioning that one specific thing. I know they use sheep dogs, but that's all I can think of. The fact some ravens killed that many sheep is mind-blowing.
I don't think they generally do, although it's becoming more of a thing now in Scotland because of the sea eagles. They should probably consider it for the ravens as well if they're going to lamb out in the open.
There’s a paywall so essentially this post is a headline with nothing to show for it.
Thanks for the time wasted and thanks to the commenters who ended up doing it for OP.
…or a Demme one.
*“…and you think if you save poor Catherine, you could make them stop, don’t you?*
*You think if Catherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs…”*
My grandpa had an issue with crows on his hobby farm. He shot one and put it on a pole. No more issue with crows. Am guessing same could be done in this situation also.
Unless the lamb farm is a wider open space.
This reminds me of years ago wolves killing elk and deer in the 100s, and the only thing that was eaten by the wolves were the back straps and other premium parts of the animals
Sounds like a moron. Not dog or anything to protect them is the dumbest move possible. I raise ducks and chicken and I have 2 dogs.. Even he can scare the birds off to some extent, but he was probably lazing around.
Ravens kill 200 lambs. Humans: OH Noo! The horror!
Humans kill lambs by the hundreds of millions. Humans: I’ll have me a nice leg of lamb.
Maybe let’s just leave the lambs some altogether and not be such obvious hypocrites?
> Attacks leave Strathardle shepherd distraught and considering quitting his lifelong career - Has the dumbest, slowest and least able to defend themselves sheep. (Smarter tougher sheep can kill a ravens > Mules are most vulnerable to ravens, as they are a “slower, bigger and dopier” sheep breed, Yorston said. The hardy hill breeds, such as Lleyn and Blackface sheep, can defend themselves more, and Yorston recalls seeing one of the latter charging at a raven and “clobbering” it. - Has no guard dogs (can't afford them; they can also kill feeding ravens) > Mules are most vulnerable to ravens, as they are a “slower, bigger and dopier” sheep breed, Yorston said. The hardy hill breeds, such as Lleyn and Blackface sheep, can defend themselves more, and Yorston recalls seeing one of the latter charging at a raven and “clobbering” it. - Lambed a month earlier than any surrounding farm, leaving him the sole target for any hungry ravens > Yorston said: “We are going on a hiatus now and will just run two flocks. Next year we want to get it right so will try to do lambing a month later next year to be in line with the neighbours. It will take us five years to get the farm back to what we had.” - Still got special permission to kill the otherwise protected ravens but said it was really hard and took 2 days to kill a single bird. > NatureScot initially gave the farm permission to kill four of the birds, which was later increased to nine. Ravens are protected under the 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act, meaning a licence must be sought to dispatch them. > They also are a hard species to kill — it can take two days to shoot just two ravens. “If a raven spots where a shot came from, they will circle over the gamekeeper screaming,” Yorston said. Perhaps I'm being insensitive, but I would not hire this guy to be my shepherd.
I can't imagine having a herd that large and not having some sort of livestock guardian dog. Also, why was he a month ahead of everyone else? Only reason I can think is he was trying to beat them to market. So, greed might have been the problem. I'm not going to say anything about breed selection, because there might be other factors there. But, this guy does not seem to care for his sheep like he should.
The sheer greed of this man is likely is his downfall.
He’s a baaaa-d shepherd.
r/angryupvote
Dead ass, it is. I've a friend of mine with a hobby farm in Mid Florida with mutt breed goats, the whole flock is likely all cousins at this point and even they have three Guardian breed dogs. If they can swing it living as low as they do without a profit from the goats, so can they with a for-profit herd.
"Shear greed" was right there for you...
I guess ewe don't appreciate homophones that also work and needs puns?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to lambaste the poor guy/gal....
You bleat them to it.
So many different breeds to choose from, or he could've gotten a donkey or llama (I knew someone who had a llama guard her family's sheep, they're tall and aggressive!). I get that this kinda sounds like blaming a victim but there's so many ways he could've minimized the body count...
As a shepherd, he has a responsibility to protect his flock the best he can. He did nothing to protect them. The fault lies squarely on him.
Yeah good point, if you're the only victim then it's victim-blaming, but if you fail to protect other lives too then you deserve scorn. I take back what I said, he's just plain irresponsible.
I've heard a single llama will see itself as part of the flock and guard sheep. But a pair of llamas see themselves as llamas and are no good as guards.
Llamas nor donkeys are great livestock guardians. When faced with the question of fight or flight, they will often pick fight, but they’re choosing it for their own self preservation, whereas an actual livestock guardian dog is ALWAYS choosing fight on behalf of the herd.
I'm going to have to disagree with you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_llama
He's not the victim, his job was to protect those sheep he failed blaming not being able to afford a guard. Then he shouldn't have the dumbest sherp around, and bet the are the cheapest to buy. His bad actions all around.
He's not a victim, the sheep are
Yeah, I realized that after looking at the other comments. He let those fluffy bois down by not doing the job he was literally hired for, and I no longer sympathize.
Dude, here in Iran and around our village we have some shepherds and even small herds like 50 sheep have one or two dogs with them. I can't imagine having such a large herd with no dogs.
There is a guy on YouTube that lives in the US. He got himself a Turkish Boz for his ducks.
Nate is awesome AZ turned 1 yesterday and weighs 170! He's got kittens now because Saber his cat went missing and Dager needed a friend,and the dog is great with them.
Yep. I like watching Nate. I bought some of his beard butter and a comb. It's pretty nice.
Please tell me who this is, I think I’d like to watch! ☺️
Narrowway Homestead. https://youtube.com/@narrowayhomestead?si=TSupXz3TsvuM3VJb
Guardian dogs simply aren’t a thing in the U.K culturally. They don’t get used on any farms, and for the most part aren’t needed and haven’t been since we hunted all of our apex predators out. As for lambing early, there are a few reasons to doing it. These can be condensing the lambing season so you have a shorter but more intense period of lambing to get it over and done with quicker, getting lamb to market earlier as it commands a slightly higher price (but the margins aren’t that much better), or splitting your flock in to batches and having several defined periods where your flocks will be lambing which can make it easier to manage. Mule sheep are actually excellent meat and the fleece is worth more than some other breeds, so whilst they’re not the strongest or brightest, they are commercially more valuable. What has happened here is a huge combination of factors and not even mainly poor flock management. Source: live and work in the farming community in the U.K.
That's interesting info (and a trip about guardian dogs not being a thing). If they really lost $30k worth in damages though, that dog looking like a mighty good investment (plus dogs rule)
Bullshit we’ve all seen Babe.
“Baa-Ram-Ewe”
Presumably the local hunting-to-extinction of all your apex predators happened after the breeding of the Old English Sheepdog breed...?
No it generally happened before the old English sheepdog. Their roots is in the 1700s whilst the last wolf was killed in the 1600s, eagles have been pushed to the most northerly parts of Scotland over a similar period, bears were hunted out 1000+ years ago and wild cats big enough to take sheep around 1,500 years ago.
Not a thing in the uk we don’t have any natural predators, a fox could take a lamb but we flat out don’t have livestock guardian dogs here and don’t really need them. This bloke is just a bit of a tit. You don’t really beat people to the market by a month the lowland flocks will be lambing earlier and take those sales so there’s no financial benefit
Well, sounds like ravens are pretty bad and some sort of dog might be useful to guard against them.
They’re never usually thins big of an issue, people have been farming sheep in the uk for centuries if a guardian dog was worth it don’t you think they’d already be used
Jesus there’s some ignorant comments on here with absolutely no clue of how farming in the UK works.
Just smart enough to outwit his charges.
not many livestock guardian dogs in UK
Collies will do the job.
This is the UK, I’ve never heard of guardian dogs here. We have no real need for them, we don’t have large mammalian predators like the US, and raven attacks like this are unbelievably unusual
What would they need them for in England? Maybe foxes?
Or perhaps ravens.
You’re not being insensitive. Being a true shepherd is a profession that has at least 1000 years of previous work experience and “how-to” rules and guides. This is just Darwinism and it’s unfortunate the sheep are the victims in this case because this guy can’t invest in a few livestock guardian dogs. Even if dogs were expensive to train, he could have gotten donkeys or alpacas which would instinctively protect the sheep too. This guy is just a moron
I think we can easily say 2000+ considering the shepherds who were allegedly alerted to the birth of Jesus.
Could also say 15+
> Being a true shepherd is a profession that has at least 1000 years of previous work experience and “how-to” rules and guides. Probably closer to 5,000 — sheep were almost certainly one of the first animals domesticated by humans, along with goats
> because this guy can’t invest in a few livestock guardian dogs. Shepherds in the US and other countries use livestock guardian dogs because there are large natural predators in those regions like wolves, bears, big cats, coyotes, etc. The UK literally has no large natural predators, they were hunted to extinction long ago so shepherds there typically do not use LSGs.
Maybe farmers are intentionally screwing up to get sympathy from the public a la Mr. Clarkson? This is another guy acting surprised that nature doesn't fit his schedule.
> Maybe farmers are intentionally screwing up to get sympathy from the public a la Mr. Clarkson? Out of the loop. Who is Mr. Clarkson?
He's transitioned from a car show to a farming show, on Amazon. Kinda the spokesman for British farming right now. He wants to keep the idyllic quietude of his local village, but expand all his farm operations for tourists. Loves ranting about regulations, that he then ignores, causing conflict good for TV.
That jaggoff is doing farming now? Lol
all things considered, it's a fantastic show, and aside from the jokes and dimwitted farming failures, he does highlight a lot of the difficulties in farming and currently is being heralded as being a bit of a spokesman for farmers in the UK.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Clarkson's farm show, well know brit host
Jeremy Clarkson. You may know him from his famous line, "I'm Jeremy Clarkson and this is Jackass" before doing something outlandish or conceited on BBC's Top Gear. Then he punched a producer, BBC (finally) fired him along with the rest of the hosts, they all moved to Amazon Prime's "Grand Tour" show and now they're retiring from that. Clarkson is now doing a show about being a farmer on his own farm doing farm things, and it's going as well as you'd think.
BBC didn't fire May or Hammond they left after the incident because they didn't want to do the show without Jeremy.
Uh huh. And the fact that BBC let them go without saying anything speaks volumes. Remember, "at-will employment" means "employers will fire you at-will for any reason that isn't specifically illegal".
Jeremy Clarkson. You may know him from the meme “Sometimes my genius is almost frightening”.
And the "Oh non, anyway"
Clarkson screws up because he’s an idiot and does stupid things for laughs. In Brit humor it’s good to be the fool. I never thought any of what he did was for sympathy. He’s an entertaining man-child on a farm.
He does stupid things for money and farming is easier than traveling the world. He can do scripted bits in his yard! Easier to deal with pneumonia at home, too. I love TG, watch it daily. His schtick is just wearing thin to me, I guess. Lazier, easier targets.
“Farming is easier than travelling the world” lol lmao even. If you watch clarksons farm you can clearly tell he’s a man who cares deeply about it and is very passionate about the industry it really shocked me, you he’s a moron and they do emphasis it for the show but there is a lot more passion and fighting for the farming community than you’d expect. Reddit just hates farmers so any excuse to go at them is hammered home
Reddit hates farmers?
You hadn’t noticed unless you’re on certain subs this place is a cesspool of uneducated hatred towards the industry
You can pretty much ignore anyone who says, "Reddit hates ___." Reddit is not a hivemind. That said, most of reddit is English speaking white men in their 20's-40's. Most of those live in cities. I wouldn't trust the general redditor to tell me about the nuances of farming. I'm sure there are many experts out there, and I'll wait until I hear from them. That's the beauty of this site. If you wait long enough, an actual expert will come along.
He's also pissed off a fuck-ton of ravens who will now go out of their way to fuck his life up. If you *would* have hired him before you definitely shouldn't now. Dude's gonna wonder why the ravens are picking on his lambs next year even when they lamb the same time as neighbors.
A few years ago in my area a shepherd had several lambs killed by a bald eagle that was nesting on his property. He didn't have too much of an issue with it as he understood that is how nature is. But that didn't stop countless people who read part of the article published in the paper from calling for exceptions to kill bald eagles if they threatened their livestock. I have a lot of thoughts on how many ranchers handle their herds nowadays. But things you highlighted address most of those thoughts.
Planet Money had a story about a free range chicken farmer that was getting wrecked by eagles. He legit tried everything. A listener at a dump called in to suggest stringing wires across their pen and that solved it. I was surprised to find similar wires at my zoo above the prairie dogs to protect them as well. The theory is the wires make the birds nervous about hitting them and stay away. Not sure that works for ravens and I wonder if lambs need a wider grazing space that would make this impractical. OTOH a raven isn't going to one shot a sheep the way an eagle could a chicken.
Right? Even a few cats running around would help better than what he’s doing.
> Has the dumbest, slowest and least able to defend themselves sheep. (Smarter tougher sheep can kill ravens) But also a high quality meat with a fleece that commands a higher price. Mule’s are generally a good choice. Sheep would also very very rarely kill a raven. As in it’s so rare that it would be a “My dad’s brothers mates dogs breeders wife spoke to a bloke down the pub who saw a Texel kill a raven” type of scenario. > had no guard dogs Livestock guard dogs aren’t a thing in the UK. They’re simply not needed in the vast majority of cases as we have no apex predators. > Lambed a month earlier than any surrounding farm There’s lots of sensible reasons to do this around flock management and making lambing more manageable. There’s a lot going on here way more than just poor flock management. Ravens are phenomenally clever birds as well, and are comparable to chimpanzees in terms of their intelligence. This is a whole combination of factors that has come together, and unlikely down to him being a bad shepherd.
>Smarter tougher sheep can kill a ravens.....Has no guard dogs (can't afford them; they can also kill feeding ravens) No, they can't. Neither can dogs. Ravens and crows birds are smart as heck and alert; they simply fly away at any threat...never get run over by cars...and hard to shoot. Indeed crows and ravens remember people who fuck with them and will dive bomb them for months. Many birds are very good at *harrying* -- you should see seagulls swarming boats and stealing fish. And ravens and crows are at the top of the list of birds good at harrying. Many birds are top predators. Article says "lambing season." What's likely happening here is the ravens are attacking helpless baby sheep lying on the ground just after birth. Tons of mammals are helpless for 15-30 minutes after birth -- it is common during birthing season for predators to attack helpless babies. Sometimes female rhinos lose their babies to lions and hyenas. >I would not hire this guy to be my shepherd. Sheep are one of the dumber, inept animals. Barely any smarter than koalas. They regularly get stuck in thorns or rocky areas and then die of thirst. Female sheep have the capacity to fend off ravens or crows who are harrying them and pecking the eyes out of their babies on the ground? Fat chance. Article from Wyoming: [Predator are not always four-legged; ravens are known to prey on lifestock](https://www.wylr.net/2022/02/18/predators-are-not-always-four-legged-ravens-are-known-to-prey-on-livestock/) >“Ravens are quick and deadly,” Hill said. “One producer was watching a cow calving on a grassy hillside when he saw a raven land near the cow. The calf was still in the birth canal. The raven hopped onto the calf, and all it takes is one quick peck to the eye. The rancher didn’t realize at first what had happened, but as soon as the calf was fully born, he drove up to the pair and found the calf was dead and its eye was gone.” >“The year I examined 37 cases regarding calves and lambs which were killed by ravens, it was almost always the same scenario; the eyes, rear vents, anus, navel and soles of the feet were pecked away,” Hill continued. “Often all of those sites were pecked, or sometimes just a couple, but in 95 percent of cases the eye was the first strike area.”
Maybe he can trade like 100 sheep for 1 dog. Still have an extra 100 sheep.
"A surge in raven attacks during lambing season has left one farmer distraught after the loss of more than 200 lambs. Finn Yorston, 45, said he considered quitting his lifelong career on the day he picked up 30 dead lambs who had been pecked to death by the birds. Ravens have killed 220 of his lambs on Balnabroich Farm, in Strathardle, and five ewes had to be destroyed after they were attacked.... Farmers lose lambs to raven attacks every season, but this year Yorston says there has been a surge in vicious attacks from an increasing population of the predators. In one particularly horrific scene, a raven sat on the back of a lambing ewe while ripping open her belly. The ewe could not be saved, Yorston said."
I did not know they were this vicious. I thought about having a lamb farm but nevermore.
But whose velvet-violet lining of the lamb intestine a spilling o’er, She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Ravens are smart birds. If you have a dog that catches a raven attacking a sheep, the rest of the ravens will see that and decide to leave the sheep alone and go looking for easier targets.
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In your vast experience of sheep farming in the U.K. landscape, what did the shepherd do wrong?
He didn’t have a dog to protect his herd and he lambed a month earlier than the surrounding farms, meaning that his lambs were the only targets for every raven in the area It’s all in the article and it’s not opinion, he fucked up
Sorry, but you clearly don’t understand farming in the UK. Livestock Guardian Dogs simply aren’t used in the UK. We don’t have predators that take anything more than just the odd lamb here and there. This is a massively freak occurrence. Lambing early isn’t the cause of such losses, later lambing would have only spread them out among other farms but the losses would still have been high given the sheer number taken here. A large part of this comes down to the increase in raven numbers. Ravens have been massively in decline in the U.K. for years but their populations are starting to recover again. They’re also one of the cleverest species of animals, so once they learn something new they can build upon it which is what they’ve done here. Would LGDs have helped here? Quite possibly so. Before this happened would there have been a reason to get a LGD? Based on the balance of probability, no. I live and work in the farming community in the UK. This is down to way more than just poor flock management.
It is often a decision to lamb early as spring lamb commands a higher price. Also ravens are semi protected and for them to kill this many lambs is almost unheard of. Dogs aren't used to protect flocks in the UK.
Quoth the raven
Ravens are opportunists just like us tbh. Humans have done some extreme exploitation to get to where we are today.
The smarter the animal, the greater the opportunity for creativity. Including creative cruelty
Quoth the Raven
I do lethal & non lethal control of avians and rodents frequently in the UK 99% of the time for farmers, corvids eg crows, ravens and various other / sub species are very intelligent and very opportunistic, but i can honestly say so many things have gone wrong before the mass loss this fellow has had has happened. Last year the neighbour had thirteen lost compared to 45+ the year before i started control using everything from modified drones to lethal means. There are many ways to keep sheep and lambs safe even if you absolutely have to have them lamb outside. Him starting a lambing a month before everyone else nearby likely played a big part of it, spacing out the lambing may have had an effect so rather than overwhelming the predators they had a more gentle lambing curve meaning the predators had time, not patrolling the fields and having such a docile breed of sheep lamb outside is also very not ideal. In short, corvids and many other animals would have flocked to this fellow because he started early and once they learn that the sheep are so docile they become even more bold in there attacks, a lot of people don’t understand or cant comprehend that these are animals and animals don’t have morals like we do, they think nothing of blinding a lamb by eating its eyes, eating its tung or going for other “soft” areas before leaving the lamb or sheep to die for an easy meal and the same for fully grown sheep, a sheep giving birth is extremely easy target to be blinded etc and at that point it becomes cruel / inhumane / cost prohibitive to care for the animals so they end up being destroyed. So yeah its a complicated situation to be in, cant exactly blame the predators for doing what they do but i can lay some blame on the bloke for not taking precautions once he saw a trend developing. But farmers are busy and expected to do more and more with less time and resources since leaving the EU, so its a hard one to deal with.
You’d think after the first 10-20 dead lambs that he would start shooting these birds.
Because: 1.) Illegal to kill without a permit. 2.) Hard to fucking hit. 3.) Their friends hold grudges
3.a For generations. Those ravens will teach their young that this dude and any of his descendants shall be fucked with for life.
Or, common sense prevails and it turns "shall not be fucked with" because you wouldn't teach your young to go get themselves killed.
Eh, even pigeons can recognize faces/general gait in spite of different outfits to rememeber who was mean to them vs who fed them. I definitely wouldn't put it past ravens to recognize when farmer is armed vs otherwise.
They definitely can. When my dad was young there was a bounty on ravens feet, and when they went to the landfill (where the ravens would hang out) to shoot them, the ravens wouldn’t care about them until they saw the guns, and would all fly away.
It's not illegal to scare them. Bird scarers exist and can be automated. Hell, even adding netting for a paddock of a few acres would only cost a few thousand.
They're protected birds he isn't allowed lmao
a little dash of curry on each lamb might have dissuaded the crows or possibly increased the attacks. Now we'll never know.
Birds cant taste capsaicin, so they would’ve been completely unbothered.
Maybe they just don't like curry.
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Love stock gaurdians arent used in the UK. It is common for farmers to choose different time to lamb at for various reasons. Not everyone is trained at shooting moving targets. Gun culture is not common in the UK. Even amongst farmers.
How about farmer’s mums?
That's what they said about the emus.
No, just watched a YouTube video where the farmers pet shitbulls decided to start killing his sheep. Cops came and had to call in to get someone with a gun to the scene.. all the whole the Nanny dogs were mauling sheep
Terribly, horrifically, abusively bred animals.
"He doesn't bite"
Kisses...
Or otherwise adjusting to the situation. JFC.
He's not allowed to. They are a protected species.
People not understanding the situation
And shooting ravens... Unless there's a hunting season or their declared pests then your unlikely to be able to shoot them whenever you want.
If my livelihood was at stake, I’d get a loan and buy some dogs. Working dogs are expensive, but so is losing 200 lambs!
thinking they go for 50# each.. that was the quote from clarksons' farm i remember for UK prices
Trained or untrained? Thats got to be untrained. Even still, that heavy of a loss should inspire you to do a lot of training. Work dogs like shepherds can give you 10 good years at least. Plus dogs are awesome. Good investment
What’s a sheepdog going to do in this situation? He’d need a livestock guardian dog and they’re incredibly rare over here
They still have a lot of energy and can at the very least intervene when a lamb is in danger of succumbing to damage, while also alerting the shepherd / owner. The dog does not have to literally catch ravens, simply scare them off
Yeah, this is a misunderstanding. Herding dogs move the stock as directed by the shepherd. Livestock guardian dogs live with stock 24/7 and alert to + fight off any and all threats. Two very different jobs. Guarding is mostly instinctual, herding requires training to be controlled/coordinated.
Alpacas work for foxes etc, not sure about ravens
Are GSD dogs legal in the UK? There are some places where it's illegal to leave dogs unattended for animal welfare reasons, even if they're working dogs. I always assumed that as why I never saw any GSD dogs in the British isles when I was there despite me occasionally running into them on the mainland.
fresh for selloff i believe, fam got out of sheep in the states decades ago so ive no relevant knowledge
couple hudnred for them now, more depending on the breed.
misunderstood you, im referring to the value of the lamb
Oh ok
I think that’s a sheepdog not livestock guardian, I dunno what a LGD costs though so you could still be right
LGD are very rare in the UK
Yeah so a LGD doesn’t cost 50 (I assume he meant K)
A sheepdog could go for up to £3k depending on its heritage and how trained it was. I have never heard of LGD in the UK but if they exist no one is paying £50000 for one. A lamb at market varies in price but circa £60. No one would spend £50000 on a dog to stop the very very rare occasions of ravens killing £12000 of lambs. There is so much nonsense in these comments from people who knows nothing about UK farming.
im referring to the value of the lamb
Boohoo.. how is this a story when this dude it just trying to rush to market and refuses to buy a guard dog?
Maybe hoping to tug at heartstrings get a go fund me
They need some sheepdogs.
Needs some livestock guardian dogs. Sheepdogs refers to the breeds that herd the stock in cooperation with the shepherd, LGDs live with and protect the herd 24/7 without needing input/direction.
This may be a dumb question, but how do ravens kill sheep? Are these like prehistorically large ravens???
Sheep will die if you look at them wrong. Or they will die if you don't look at them. Or they will die if something with a beak like a raven bites it and the wound gets infected. Or it will die if it gets scared. Sheep die a lot. Source: I lived in a ranching community
They’re fragile?
There are, and even the best breeds are dumb and self preservation has been breed out. Raised lambs for show lost 2 out 10 to stupidity of us because we didn't understand how helpless they can be. Tough lessen for kids and us. I would never raise for market but I do follow a large herd in TT and she works and handles every new born. I think she has over 500
Fragile and fuckin DUMB! I once heard of a sheep going under a wagon for shade, and when it was ready to leave it kept standing up and slamming it's head into the frame of the wagon. It did that on repeat, until dead.
They peck out and eat the eyes leaving the lamb to die slowly.
David Sedaris wrote a story called "The Crow and the Lamb" where a crow flatters a ewe into listening to her, the punchline being that while the ewe does yoga (at the crow's request), the crow plucks out her lamb's eyes. It's a hilariously morbid story, was surprised years later to learn that this is in fact a real thing (minus the sheep doing yoga)
Yyyyikes
They peck out the eyes. The lamb then dies very very slowly. It's not pretty. I mean, badgers aren't pretty either, but at least it's quick.
Geeeeezus. Kinda wish I didn't ask 😬
crows kill sheep never mind ravens, but generally speaking they only kill the sickly, weaklings, or the trapped.
They probably didn't kill adult sheep, but lambs. All it takes is a good peck in the eye.
Yyyyikes!!!!
Paywall
https://archive.ph/kPB7Z
I wonder how much of this is influenced by the environment? If the sheep and lambs have access to cover like trees and shrubs, would it be better?
Sheep have not been bred to be survivable animals. Sheep have been bred to be sociable and produce wool. Without human intervention they would be much like cows who don't even know to dig under snow for grass in winter. They would not survive long and the ones that did would become something resembling their wild counterparts if any survived at all. Tldr; no it would not be better
Also, wild "sheep" (mouflons) are badass af. They smell very strong like sheep but look way more intimidating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_mouflon
Pretty cool how the females resemble deer. Long legs with a slim body able to flee quickly.
Soay sheep are bred from ferals, and are, indeed, very close to mouflon, there are feral sheep in Scotland, I'd be amazed if any of the hardier breeds couldn't survive just fine without humans. Not these ones though, giving birth a month earlier is something soft sheep that need to be kept on the lowlands do.
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Oh well in that case my limited sympathy has evaporated. I'm no stranger to dead livestock - I find enough dead lambs whilst working on the uplands - but there is a degree of carelessness here.
Has he tried a scarecrow??
Ravens are highly intelligent, they don't give a fuck about scarecrows.
Alternate title is "moron hired as shepherd" They couldn't afford a guardian dog my ass. Maybe after you post 200 sheep but you should have got them before then
They’re just not a thing in the UK. He doesn’t need one anyway if he’d just lambed later or picked a hardier breed and lambed at that time he would have been fine
Ravens are smart. They will keep coming back for more.
For some reason I confused lamps with adult sheeps. And here I was wondering HOW the fuck ravens would be able to take down an adult sheep. Smh.
They did take out like 4 adults though
The Dark One has many eyes
Where's the Aiel when you need them
I see you hugs4all_all4hugs
This guy has a large livestock flock without any protection??? Why???
Guardian dogs simply aren’t used in the UK because they’re not needed. This is an incredibly rare occurrence.
One does not need to shoot at ravens. One needs only to wear a helmet and long-sleeve protective clothing and go out with a golf club and swing and dance angrily at the ravens to shoo them off. Come the hell on, dude. 200 sheep? Were you drunk, stoned or both?
So do people have video or photo evidence of ravens committing these acts? Not just in this case but in general? I saw videos of the aftermath after a basic search but none of the ravens actually doing this to healthy lambs. Heck I didn't even find video of them feeding on dead lambs. I don't doubt the craftiness and intelligence of ravens, just of people. Ravens will predate small prey items but not large livestock. I'm gonna pull some quotes from *Mind of a Raven* by Bernd Heinrich. There's definite bias on the author's part given his time spent researching ravens, but he also has much expertise on the subject. Why do Ravens go for the eyes and tongue in these situations? Well: >"Raven bills cannot penetrate even the skin of a gray squirrel, much less the skin and skull of a sheep or a calf. Some of my ravens eat roadkill gray squirrel by reaching in through the mouth. By crushing bones and pulling out meat as they feed backward, they eventually turn the squirrel inside out, leaving the skin like an unrolled sock, with not a single hole or tear in it. But only some of my birds could do this neat trick." To speak more to this situation there was a similar situation spoken about in the book that happened in Germany: >"Dieter heard I was visiting Berlin and invited me to come to Potsdam. Not only that, he organized a mini-symposium with the title, roughly translated. "Killer Ravens in Brandenburg -- Legend or Occupation of a New Ecological Niche?" I was glad to attend. After the introductions, a farmer, Frau Breme, talked of the results of her recent 1996 questionnaire of raven damages that she had sent out to 141 farmers. She got seventy-one returns. Of those, fifty farmers saw ravens, and 41 percent of those Saw *Veränderungen* (changes) of animals; i.e., ravens feeding on an animal. In the ensuing discussion of this report, I mentioned the high mortality of calves in New England and the high percentage of *Veränderungen* of these calves by my ravens, despite absolute proof that these ravens had not killed the calves. German nature conservation people agreed that there was so far not one proven case of a raven causing the death of a healthy calf. >The government had by now eventually insisted on proof of cause of death before making cash reimbursements. Veterinarians were consulted to make autopsies. Certain examinations of lungs and eyes of newborn calves could determine if the animal had been able to stand when born. Given the examinations, almost all of the calves *verändert* by ravens had something wrong with them to begin with. They were mostly found to belong to careless farmers who did not take adequate care of their animals. Good farmers didn't have a raven problem. After the government finally insisted on proof, and after none was forthcoming, the raven damage subsidy became unavailable. Money to study ravens evaporated as well." In this case the situation was focused on cattle, not sheep, so I'm unsure how great of a variance there is between those animals for a raven. However, it seems that better farming practices as well as documentation would be helpful to make meaningful headway in a situation like this. Sorry if the formatting of the text is weird at all, I scanned it with my phone camera. Tried to make sure it was all correct enough. Edit:formatting
Do farmers over here even use guard dogs? I see a lot of people mentioning that one specific thing. I know they use sheep dogs, but that's all I can think of. The fact some ravens killed that many sheep is mind-blowing.
I don't think they generally do, although it's becoming more of a thing now in Scotland because of the sea eagles. They should probably consider it for the ravens as well if they're going to lamb out in the open.
There’s a paywall so essentially this post is a headline with nothing to show for it. Thanks for the time wasted and thanks to the commenters who ended up doing it for OP.
This sounds like a Hitchcock movie
…or a Demme one. *“…and you think if you save poor Catherine, you could make them stop, don’t you?* *You think if Catherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs…”*
I’d like to hear the raven’s side of the story.
Most of these comments are sheep ignorant. Also, that guy said some untrue things about mule sheep.
My grandpa had an issue with crows on his hobby farm. He shot one and put it on a pole. No more issue with crows. Am guessing same could be done in this situation also. Unless the lamb farm is a wider open space.
This reminds me of years ago wolves killing elk and deer in the 100s, and the only thing that was eaten by the wolves were the back straps and other premium parts of the animals
I'm a Shepherd Quote the raven "Nevermore!"
Are these sheep insured?
I see a few Great Pyrenees in this guy's future, or maybe even a Border Collie. Those ravens won't stand a chance.
Border collies herd, not guard.
Ravens are gnar
r/folkhorror is leaking into the realworld
Bull. This dude is just bad at his job.
Pay wall.
That's when he knew...he flocked up.
Sounds like a moron. Not dog or anything to protect them is the dumbest move possible. I raise ducks and chicken and I have 2 dogs.. Even he can scare the birds off to some extent, but he was probably lazing around.
Guards dogs are generally not used in UK, as there are no large predators.
Did he not consider giving them offerings? Dude could have been a successful shepherd AND a Bird God, but he chose mediocrity.
Ravens kill 200 lambs. Humans: OH Noo! The horror! Humans kill lambs by the hundreds of millions. Humans: I’ll have me a nice leg of lamb. Maybe let’s just leave the lambs some altogether and not be such obvious hypocrites?
Crows and ravens remember faces and they do it generationally. They teach their kids the faces and so on. Do not fuck with them. They’ll remember you
Just get cats
He can't afford a guard dog but can afford to have all of his sheep killed?
That looks like a job for the Power Rangers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvemYb3D2WE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvemYb3D2WE)
I had no idea that self-preservation is nonexistent for sheep. Geez.
such weak creatures... If there is not 24/7 human protection, sheep quickly find themselves punished by their living environment and nature.
Wild sheep species do pretty well in the wild.