What decapitates 3-4 week old lambs?

[Glengarral]

Had a problem like this at a neighbouring farm ten years ago where I worked.
Lost 3 or 4 lambs and couldn't be sure what was doing the killing ...bodies /remains were in a similar state when found.

Had worked late one night and just thought I heard something at the rear of one of the sheds...went quietly to investigate and found the farmers own Jack Russell with a lamb ...huge wound to rump/leg but still alive.

Local vet spent 2 hours sewing lamb up from the inside out and it lived.....farmer kept it as a pet.

Farmer didn't believe his dog was the culprit but having had the run of the farm (and knowing it backwards) the little bugger (big for a Jr actually) was confined to the house and the killing stopped.

The bodies/remains/damage to the carcasses made us think the local badger/fox population had been involved in scavenging after they were dead.

One or two carcasses had scratch marks under the wool on the skin identical to those on the lamb I caught the dog with and when I had lit him up with the torch he was scratching at the lamb in an exited frenzy (the unexplained noise) then taking a bite.

The same excellent vet saved a ewe a few years later when I was looking after another neighbours flock, this time the culprit was a German shepherd from the house next door to the farm.
We remembered and talked about the Jack russell incident before he left and he said he'd only recently treated lamb(s) on another local farm where the farmer's cairn terrier was eventually found to be the culprit.

I have a border terrier and Jr/patterdale cross myself and have always had dogs.....wouldn't be without them.
The thing that struck me back then was that even well fed, well trained,livestock friendly and people friendly dogs can go bad and use all their skills the wrong way if allowed to roam.

Hope you solve it and find the culprit

 

[User00033]

Giant badgers, sly foxes, The Farage, an elusive panther, pykies, killer lynx, hard case otters, wolves (cue wolf howl), a tusked razorback boar, pulpy kidneys, errant sheepdogs, a past it rock guitarist... and a murderous Jack Russell!

Freakin' hell what the fark has gone down in Kent? Jeez, last time I was there it was all oast houses and commuting bankers and Henry VIII and Russian gangsters! Safe as houses!

 

[Utectok]

Wild boar eat lambs up here... not big ones I presume but it is quite common for the small ones to get turned into pig meat!!

 

[Cyres]

Big badgers are not that uncommon and if need be can move surprisingly quickly. Yesterday I was sent a video showing at badger seriously attacking what appears to be a freshly killed muntie RTA. Clearly very capable of opening up any lamb they are extremly powerfull animals.

D

 

[Tom D]

There’ve been a few headless lambs on my friends farm, it’s almost certainly badgers.

 

[royr]

Thanks for the input Gents, appreciated.
I contacted the Farmers son and he had taken a photo of the earlier incident, 1 of the 2 decapitated 3-week old lambs, killed 2 nights apart at different locations approx. 500 yards apart. Both decapitated lambs appeared healthy.
No mauling of the rest of the body when it was discovered in the morning @ 06.30hrs, the same night it had been killed.
I include it here:-
Regards
RoyR

 

[Basil H]

Utectok - hence my earlier question about boar. I'm hearing of lamb killing way north of Bonar Bridge, but only at second hand.

 

[VSS]

Had a problem like this at a neighbouring farm ten years ago where I worked.
Lost 3 or 4 lambs and couldn't be sure what was doing the killing ...bodies /remains were in a similar state when found.

Had worked late one night and just thought I heard something at the rear of one of the sheds...went quietly to investigate and found the farmers own Jack Russell with a lamb ...huge wound to rump/leg but still alive.

Local vet spent 2 hours sewing lamb up from the inside out and it lived.....farmer kept it as a pet.

Farmer didn't believe his dog was the culprit but having had the run of the farm (and knowing it backwards) the little bugger (big for a Jr actually) was confined to the house and the killing stopped.

The bodies/remains/damage to the carcasses made us think the local badger/fox population had been involved in scavenging after they were dead.

One or two carcasses had scratch marks under the wool on the skin identical to those on the lamb I caught the dog with and when I had lit him up with the torch he was scratching at the lamb in an exited frenzy (the unexplained noise) then taking a bite.

The same excellent vet saved a ewe a few years later when I was looking after another neighbours flock, this time the culprit was a German shepherd from the house next door to the farm.
We remembered and talked about the Jack russell incident before he left and he said he'd only recently treated lamb(s) on another local farm where the farmer's cairn terrier was eventually found to be the culprit.

I have a border terrier and Jr/patterdale cross myself and have always had dogs.....wouldn't be without them.
The thing that struck me back then was that even well fed, well trained,livestock friendly and people friendly dogs can go bad and use all their skills the wrong way if allowed to roam.

Hope you solve it and find the culprit

Interesting you mention the Jack Russell. During the most prolonged period of regular dog attacks I experienced in my own flock I kept on finding ewes with their thigh muscles badly chewed, or even with lumps missing from their thighs, but otherwise undamaged (but very stressed). It turned out in the end to be a Jack Russell working in conjunction with a collie. The collie was a pet, not a trained sheepdog, but it had enough natural instinct to herd a group of sheep into a corner and keep them there while the terrier waded in and did the damage. Eventually I caught them in the act, but was unfortunately unable to shoot them. However, the owner subsequently got rid of the terrier (and paid some of my vet's bills), and the attacks stopped. Without the terrier to egg him on the collie became very well behaved.

 

[Mossypaw]

Had a badger up here got a taste for lamb a couple of years ago. It used to start eating them while they were still alive, if disturbed he would leave the lamb with no lips. Left to it he would carry on working his way down the body, always working head to tail.

 

[SussexSteve]

Do you have a thermal spotter ?

 

[royr]

BOAR? Maybe, there have been recorded sightings in Kent, I know they are omnivores but had believed their meat/flesh intake was of already dead stuff, carrion. However, just Googled "Boars diet" and read this - "They are not generally thought of as predators, but they are. They are drawn to birthing areas by their acute sense of smell, and will eat the newborn and placenta so there is no trace left. Ranchers cannot tell whether they lost newborn stock or never had it." OK, but 3-4 week old healthy agile lambs is surely a big step away from the birthing time?

Hello SGArms,
if your question was directed at me then "Yes". About 6 years ago I purchased the Pulsar HD50s spotter, since then have progressed to full Thermal kit of Ward WT1 75-3 & Pulsar Apex LRF XQ50 Riflescopes. I use the Apex LRF as a hand held spotter/rangefinder to determine distance/bullet drop to target with my other rifles.(CF rifles zeroed at 200yds) This Apex LRF is only mounted on my 22LR as riflescope when out culling bunnies, using the old HD50s as spotter..

Off Topic - Have recently learned of 2 Honey Badgers escaping Zoo captivity in my local area last year, no where near the lambing fields in question here. Apparently these can be quite ferocious, did not read/hear anything about this in local newspapers or local TV?

Regards
RoyR

 

[Utectok]

Utectok - hence my earlier question about boar. I'm hearing of lamb killing way north of Bonar Bridge, but only at second hand.

Yeah one big sow got a taste for lamb and ate loads a few years back... Now she is bacon....

 

[Buchan]

Thanks for the input Gents, appreciated.
I contacted the Farmers son and he had taken a photo of the earlier incident, 1 of the 2 decapitated 3-week old lambs, killed 2 nights apart at different locations approx. 500 yards apart. Both decapitated lambs appeared healthy.
No mauling of the rest of the body when it was discovered in the morning @ 06.30hrs, the same night it had been killed.
I include it here:-
Regards
RoyR

View attachment 159469

It looks like there might have been enough for a PM there

 

[User00033]

@roryr, if you see anything in your thermal spotter that looks remotely like this, run away.

 

[Utectok]

Yeah one big sow got a taste for lamb and ate loads a few years back... Now she is bacon....

The eat them all usually well the whole carcass

 

[royr]

Good Morning Gents,
Viewing the two photos together, is it the general opinion that just ONE beast/animal was responsible for the 2 killings?
OR was it the work of TWO different beast/animals?
At the moment, I'm leaning towards TWO killers, simply because the way in which each lamb was killed is SO different!
Regards
RoyR

Morning Dodgyknees,
If it's alien, I'm screwed; I do not own Atomic Laser Rifle, or Light Sabre!

 

[Scotty99]

As you can't be there all the time I'd get as many trail cams out as you can in the most likely spots and see what turns up. I suspect it's either foxes or badgers or both working in shifts, but it's odd that the head and neck look in tact.

You'd be surprised what relatively small foxes can take.

This turkey weighing about 10 lbs was taken by this small vixen from a small holders paddock in broad daylight, it dragged it across the paddock over a five bar gate and about 100 yards down the lane with the small holder in pursuit, the fox dropped the bird and the small holder retrieved the carcass and gave me a call. I staked the carcass down with wire in the paddock and on the second night the fox returned at about 11:00pm and was tugging in the carcase when I took it from about 80 yards with my .223 and Ward NV. The shotgun on the photo was just for scale when the bird was staked out.

Apologies about the quality of the nighttime photos the flash on my phone was very effective in the pitch black.

 

[User00033]

It’s a badger with possible help from foxes @roryr.

Sorry to approach this in my supposedly humorous way, but I have found it amusing to read all the suggestions of escaped exotics from far flung continents, and more besides.

Now it’s been a fair while since I’ve been involved with this kind of thing, I.e worrying about predators, primarily because we don’t have any here other than (rarely) dogs. The lambs that we lose we expect to get cleaned up by the pigs within a matter of hours. I can stand on a saddle and look in two directions and watch pigs wandering around between ewes and newborn lambs, hoovering up afterbirth and the dead. A breached ewe might well be in trouble and potentially disappear in her entirety should things go wrong. But I have never witnessed a pig eating a dying lamb or ewe. That isn’t to say it doesn’t happen. Some farmers here have been able to prove that a particularly aggressive boar is killing live lambs, but they almost always leave the skin of live lambs behind, and we don’t see that here. A significant amount of money has gone into fencing the lowland flats to keep pigs out from paddocks carrying ewes scanned as having twins or triplets.

I have watched badgers many times as a kid bringing carrion back to the sett. Headless lambs in the paddock were almost always badgers, as they targeted the brains. It’s a very tell tale and characteristic carcass. A hungry badger might just keep going on down the spine, else it would move on and the scavenging fox would take over. No lynx, panthers, wolves or escaped honey badgers required... but I wouldn’t get too excited about there being other animals involved just because you’ve got one lamb eaten from the other end.

I would spend some time searching the surrounding copses for a badger sett, then sit up and observe. I’d bet my left nut that you’ve got a big hungry sow nearby as she’ll have dropped her cubs 2-3 months ago and they will be ready to leave home shortly. Shouldn’t be too hard to track down.

 

[hendrix's rifle]

It’s a badger with possible help from foxes @roryr.

Sorry to approach this in my supposedly humorous way, but I have found it amusing to read all the suggestions of escaped exotics from far flung continents, and more besides.

Now it’s been a fair while since I’ve been involved with this kind of thing, I.e worrying about predators, primarily because we don’t have any here other than (rarely) dogs. The lambs that we lose we expect to get cleaned up by the pigs within a matter of hours. I can stand on a saddle and look in two directions and watch pigs wandering around between ewes and newborn lambs, hoovering up afterbirth and the dead. A breached ewe might well be in trouble and potentially disappear in her entirety should things go wrong. But I have never witnessed a pig eating a dying lamb or ewe. That isn’t to say it doesn’t happen. A significant amount of money has gone into fencing the lowland flats to keep pigs out from paddocks carrying ewes scanned as having twins or triplets.

I have watched badgers many times as a kid bringing carrion back to the sett. Headless lambs in the paddock were almost always badgers, as they targeted the brains. It’s a very tell tale and characteristic carcass. A hungry badger might just keep going on down the spine, else it would move on and the scavenging fox would take over. No lynx, panthers, wolves or escaped honey badgers required... but I wouldn’t get too excited about there being other animals involved just because you’ve got one lamb eaten from the other end.

I would spend some time searching the surrounding copses for a badger sett, then sit up and observe. I’d bet my left nut that you’ve got a big hungry sow nearby as she’ll have dropped her cubs a 2-3 of months ago and they will be ready to leave home shortly. Shouldn’t be too hard to track down.

Easy finding them, problem comes when there's nothing you can legally do lol

 

[.270]

Good Morning Gents,
Viewing the two photos together, is it the general opinion that just ONE beast/animal was responsible for the 2 killings?
OR was it the work of TWO different beast/animals?
At the moment, I'm leaning towards TWO killers, simply because the way in which each lamb was killed is SO different!
Regards
RoyR

Morning Dodgyknees,
If it's alien, I'm screwed; I do not own Atomic Laser Rifle, or Light Sabre!

View attachment 159635
View attachment 159637

If you think I can be a Help to you, just give me a shout. David