Farmer Focus: Irresponsible dog owners need to be educated

I hope everyone enjoyed the Easter Bank Holiday weekend with the same great weather we had here in the Lake District.

There has been a lot more tourists about this weekend, as expected.

As always, this puts much more pressure on local facilities and resources, but it is great to see the businesses that rely on them getting back into full swing after Covid-19 restrictions.

About the author

Patrick Morris-Eyton

Livestock Farmer Focus writer

Patrick farms 650 Swaledales bred to New Zealand Highlander tups and 350 predominantly Aberfield ewes put to Primeras and Aberfields across 250ha plus common fell grazing with parents Robert and Rowena near Millom, West Cumbria. The farm runs a 250-head Holstein herd averaging 10,000 litres supplying Arla and a Hydro Power and building business, Beckside Construction.

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The main issue that arises at this time of year, during lambing and calving, is a misunderstanding of the countryside.

We have had one instance of a dog worrying lambing ewes, where the person thought they were doing nothing wrong, and the dog was “just playing”.

See also: 6 top maize growing tips to help livestock producers

Another involved people way off the footpath running around among lambing sheep and disturbing the ewes with new lambs.

There needs to be so much more done to educate and punish the owners of said dogs when these issues arise. The welfare problems they cause are impossible to quantify.

The maize has been drilled under film again. The warm weather has meant the soil conditions are perfect and, hopefully, will give the maize a great start.

We have upped our area grown this year by another 10ha (25 acres) for two reasons.

Firstly, we want to feed maize silage for more of the year, and secondly, with the way fertiliser prices are, maize is very attractive compared with grass silage.

We can grow the maize purely on pre-drilling dairy slurry, so we don’t need fertiliser for the crop.

As I write this, we are now 14 days into lambing and the ewes are well past three-quarters of the way through the season. The weather has been kind and the ewes are looking great.

Overall, the lambs are coming out and up on their feet very quickly.

We have been tagging a lot at birth, or as close to it as possible, to try to get our replacements from ewes we know have lambed unassisted, and whose lambs have hit the ground running.

This also allows us to cull out the substandard ewes.