AIBU to be fed up with walkers trespassing on our land?

This ^ would be my advice too

Ask local PROW officer for suggestions - particularly on improving signage and making the path boundary clearer to walkers

from being in the same boat as OP 9/10 is about right, people are unbelievably entitled. If anything being nice tends to lead to them arguing back more.

This is awful op. We live rurally and the amount of dog owners who let their dogs run through crops crapping everywhere never ceases to surprise me.,

I'm a dog owner, we stick to paths I'd never barge through farmer's fields.
Sadly so many are entitled and selfish.

All you can do is keep bollocking them every time you catch them at it. If you know who they are I'd even pop round and ask them if they insist on trespassing can they at least pick their dog crap up.

Apart from clear, polite signs, there's not much more you can do other than fence it off.
I feel your pain though. I have farmers in the family, who breed sheep and cows on the Welsh border. There isn't a public footpath through their land, but that doesn't seem to stop them!
They do have a few pretty tough sheepdogs though, and one of those running full-pelt at you, barking at the top of it's lungs, is enough to send most people scarpering!

I live next to lots of land that has access through them, farmer land, I have no idea where the paths are supposed to be as they are not sign posted. I normally walk around the edge to find the next public right of way entrance.

I have an app but sometimes the right of way isn’t clear. Sometimes the issue is that the ‘official’ path goes through the crops so you keep to the outside and end up stuck, or having to cross the crops to get the the fence or style. This isn’t often but sometimes some (and not many) land owners don’t make it clear. I think sometimes it’s because not many people walk on some of these paths and occasionally it’s to discourage walkers.

As a fellow farm worker, OP, I feel your pain- and also wonder about the solution! Permanent fencing is extortionate, and not always practical when you need gates big enough to accommodate combine harvesters and things, and you can just duck under electric fencing or push through hedging. We have a bird scarer, and that still scares the living daylights out of me when it goes off! There was even a film made about Right to Roam last year.

I've worked on farms where a family from a neighbouring housing estate encouraged their many children to chase the lambs, where people damage fencing, gates get left open by walkers, livestock gets killed by loose dogs, and we were accused of ruining EVERYTHING by putting cows in a field with a footpath in it (for 2-3 days, as they ate the grass in there quite quickly). As for dog muck, we were told that cows and sheep poo in fields, so why can't their dogs? It is frustrating when you just want what's best for your livestock and land, but we are obviously all stupid, grumpy farmers who know nothing!

So far, the only successful non-livestock-related ways of getting trespassers to leave was approaching with a Huntaway (which is trained to bark on command), with a muck-spreader (it's amazing how quickly trespassers can run when at risk of being pelted with manure!) and with my grumpy farm manager's reputation for kicking up a stink...

We have problems with people walking through our yard (no prow) or making up their own routes across the fields, it is a little better now than it was in Covid. We find that walkers can be quite aggressive when asked to stick to the bridleway ( OH had a notable interaction with a group one Boxing Day who were nowhere near the ROW, and thought nothing of walking through the area we were shooting!)
Our main issue is with dog poo, particularly one person in the village (a former farmer) who has taught his dogs to only poo in our fields, or when walking through the village at night flicks the poo into our field with a trowel. He no longer speaks to us after we asked him to pick up after his dogs and continues to allow the field pooing which is awful when you get off a tractor into a pile of poo.

In my job 9 times out of ten people get arsey with a simple request of ' please don't sit on the patients bed, I will get you a visitors chair'.

They have to walk past the chairs to enter the ward. Some know fine well not to sit on the bed as they've been asked not to before yet still do it.
They huff, 'oh there's me getting into trouble again'....or stomp away and get a chair or question 'why am I not allowed, the chairs aren't comfy'..
Then when you try to explain why the hand goes up to stop you talking......it happens so often, people are so rude.

Do you not have and OS map or app?

We often walk on the footpaths in Devon, and one particular route skirts a farm. DH is a very experienced walker/backpacker so maps are always checked before setting out to avoid wandering onto private land. On one particular occasion, we were met at the gate closest to the farm by what we believe was one of the farmer’s sheepdogs. We knew the route was through the gate, turn right along the ridge, so just carried on, and the dog trotted along beside us for about a mile and a half. As we opened the next gate, the path took us through a field of sheep, and we were a bit concerned in case the dog followed us - what if he didn’t belong to the farm and might distress the sheep? He didn’t….just waited until we had shut the gate behind us, and off he went. A quiet but vigilant companion (I suspect we were being herded in the right direction!)

i never get arsey
i stick to footpaths
and i pick up after my dog

send a man out to tell them! a farmer

Some of the farmers near me fenced in their footpaths during covid because people though they could just wander off and have picnics and bbqs in the woods, by the streams etc. Unbelievably rude. People have definitely become more entitled and aggressive. I asked a man to put his dog on a lead because it was bothering pregnany Ewes and his response was vile. The same twats have ruined camping by rocking up with their tv's, stereos, dick head kids who kick balls at other peoples tents etc.

Do you know how much fencing is? Also what if the path goes through a cropped field?

Only an idiot would think that every footpath can be fenced.

This post gives me flashbacks to my childhood. My dad is a keen walker and would routinely direct us across what he believed were footpaths - the problem being, he had absolutely no flexibility to accept he might possibly have read the map wrong. On many occasions we'd be met by an irate farmer insisting we were off the path, and he'd insist on continuing, or we'd find a field with warnings about farm dogs/bulls and he'd insist we carried straight on. Oddly, he's terrified of dogs, so it wasn't even that he wasn't scared - but I remember constantly being really frightened a dog would come for us.

As I got older I realised this was really not normal; there was absolutely no need for it, and he was probably just misreading the map. But since covid, I think a lot of people take the same attitude. I'm not even sure signs help much - some people are just bloody minded about it.

If you absolutely don't want people straying from the path you will have to fence it.

Because it’s expensive. I have lots of farmer friends and most say that signs are routinely taken down/destroyed and some even say fences are cut through. Fencing is expensive. Also OS maps exist, it’s up to the walker not the farmer to make sure they’re in the right place.

I live in a semi rural area having grown up in a town. It never fails to amaze me the number of people who think walking a dog through a field of cows is ok!

just because it’s a footpath doesn’t mean it’s always suitable for dogs!

someone actually took a video of their (admittedly small) dog “playing” with sheep!

Yabu trying to grow FOOD in the dog walkers private playground. Dogs have the right to be everywhere niw.

Same people probably complain about their supermarket shop being too expensive.

We have a footpath too. Agree with earlier posters that extremely obvious signage is the way to go. We also make the route obvious in all seasons (so it’s always mown low while the grass around is always higher). The worst is when they take blossom or fruit from the trees…but there’s only the odd one that does that! I love walking too so am very appreciative of footpaths… I got lost on one yesterday that was badly signed and am apologetic if a landowner comes to berate me (but I often point out politely that their signage needs updating and I might be off route because they’ve blocked off a style or locked a gate etc). Luckily ours is really only used by neighbours and the odd walking group!

I don't know much about countryside law, and I know it's different in different parts of the UK (Scotland vs England for example), but is there a way to embrace the inevitable and make a fenced path through your fields following the route generally taken? Are there perhaps grants available for that?

Put up a sign saying ‘danger. Unexploded bomb’. You can buy them online

Either electric fence it or get one of them bird scares that goes off intermittently and scare the buggers off
some dog owners think they have the right to roam free