Pride and joy of farming being taken away by livestock worrying, farmers warn

Dog attacks on livestock is a problem which is only getting worse for the rural sector, as farmers recount the distressing experiences which are taking away the love and joy that farming brings to their lives.

NFU Mutual's recently published livestock worrying survey on Tuesday (February), revealed the cost of incidents across the UK had risen by 10% to £1.95 million in 2025.

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Of the 1,407 dog owners, 72% said they were not actively taking steps to prevent their dogs from chasing and almost two-thirds said they do not believe their dogs are capable of harming or killing animals.

Taking an uninterested and detached attitude to the problem has only exacerbated farmers' frustration with dog owners as livestock are killed or injured time and time again.

Fifth generation farmer Jack Forster, of St Helens in Lancashire, said an attack by a stray dog left four in-lamb ewes dead and another seriously injured on a Lancashire farm.

Carrying out the daily check on his organic lambing flock, Mr Forster was horrified to find a trail of destruction across the field, with four Cheviot cross mules dead and another bleeding heavily from severe cuts.

The rest of the 120 heavily pregnant ewes were highly stressed, and he feared heavy losses when they lambed a few weeks later.

There was no sign of a dog or dogs, but a gamekeeper who had been working in a nearby field reported that he had seen an Akita dog roaming free on the day when the sheep were attacked.

Shortly afterwards, Jack was made aware of a Facebook posting about an Akita missing from a house only a mile away from his farm.

Without evidence it was not possible to prove that this was the dog responsible for the attack.

"We did not know the ewes had been attacked until I made my daily check," he says.

"There's no footpath or public access to the field so my first thought of finding a dead sheep was that it had died from natural causes.

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"Then I saw a ewe bleeding heavily and realised they had both been savaged by a dog.

"Another ewe was dead on the ground and two more had been chased into a pond where they drowned.

"It was a huge shock as we have not had problems with livestock worrying before, but the real worry was that the surviving ewes had been chased so much that there would be a lot of still births.

"Dog owners need to realise that all dogs - large and small - are capable of attacking livestock so they must be kept under control when being walked near grazing sheep and cattle.

"It is equally important to make sure they cannot escape from owners' homes and gardens."

Husband and wife duo Kristian and Aimee Smith run a flock of Swaledale mules and pedigree Leicesters together with 45 suckler cows on a mixture of rented and owned land around Levens, Brigsteer, the Sizergh estate and Silverdale.

The first generation farmers have built up the flock and cattle herd from scratch.

But their passion for farming has been tested by dealing with the consequences of dogs attacking their livestock over the last three years.

In one such incident, three valuable pedigree Leicester ewes and seven lambs were chased into the river by dogs, where they drowned.

Other attacks have left dozens of sheep and lambs dead and injured.

They now live with constant anxiety because of frequent sheep worrying incidents caused by walkers in the area letting their dogs roam out of control.

Farmers say owners do not care if dogs worry livestock

Since Covid, the couple have seen a huge increase in the number of people who let poorly-trained dogs roam loose and do not seem to understand or care if they worry their livestock.

"It is constant and means I am on edge all the time," Mr Smith added.

"I probably tell someone to put their dog on its lead every single day and 90% of the time get abuse back.

"One day, me and my wife were looking after new lambs in the field next door when she saw a dog run straight under the gate into the field where there was sheep due to lamb, but the dog chased the sheep to one end of the field. 

"We shouted to the owner to get that dog under control and on a lead, he did not have any recall on the dog.

Farmers receive verbal abuse when asking owners to put dogs on a lead

"Eventually he got the dog back to him and put it on a lead and went into the next field where we had cows with young calves.

"Aimee went to the gate to check everything was all right and saw he had let the dog off the lead again with no real control or thought for the cattle in the field.

"After Aimee asked him to put the dog on the lead, he spent 10 minutes shouting abuse about how he had the right to let his dog roam [in the countryside], making Aimee feel very intimidated and overwhelmed with emotions of anger and fear."

Mr Smith said owners think they have the right to do what they want without any thought to the damage their dogs could cause to hard-working farmers.

"We work very well with the National Trust, who have issues all over their estate with dog worrying they put signs about livestock being present and the need to keep dogs on leads and to pick up after the dog – but it does not have any effect.

Impact on farm businesses

"We cannot graze sheep in the most popular dog walking field and we have to be very careful to only graze very calm cows.

"They put up with a lot – recently we found two pug dogs had chased our in-calf sucklers and had them pinned in a corner of the field.

"The dogs' owner said her pets were not causing any harm.

"These dog attacks have cost us thousands of pounds through sheep being killed, or injured and having to have those injuries treated.

"We have also had to pay for a lot of electric fencing to try and keep our stock safe from dogs.

"It is really getting us down. The latest attack, with our pedigree Leicesters being killed, was the worst blow for us.

"They are our pride and joy.

"We would spend a lot of time and care rearing them and had deliberately put them in a field without public access where we had thought they would be safe."

Flock breeding programme in ruins

In North Wales, two dog attacks in the space of a year have left a farmer's flock breeding programme in ruins.

Neil Fowles, who farms near Mold, said the incidents have led to 18 lambs being killed. 

"The first I knew something was wrong was when I went onto the field to check the stock and was horrified to find seven of the store lambs dead and the rest acting strangely," Mr Fowles added.

"We did wonder if the lambs had been poisoned until police confirmed that the most likely cause was the lambs being chased round the field until they died of exhaustion.

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"Two days later, there was another attack. This time 10 lambs were killed with horrendous injuries. Their ears were bitten to shreds and the flesh torn from their faces.

"Once again there was no trace of a dog or any witnesses. There's no public access to the field but it is along the roadside so we wondered if it could be linked to lurchers being trained for hare coursing.

"What affected me most was when we had to load the dead lambs up to take their bodies for disposal. Seeing their horribly injured bodies in a heap was an awful experience.

"The lambs were being reared as replacement ewes for our flock. Losing so many has really put us back because we had sold a lot of the stores the previous year to help pay for a parcel of land.

"Nothing can replace the genetic line we have been developing for years."

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