Aibu to think I should be ok to exercise my well behaved dog wherever I like in fields

[Scrowy]

I'm not BU because my dog is a farm dog and the fields are my fields.

Sadly however the local dog owners seem to think that our fields (some with footpaths, some without) are fair game and that they have an equal right to use them as they see fit.

This week we have politely asked 6 people with loose dogs to remove themselves from the pasture we have just separated some lambs into. There is no footpath in that field but it has a nice view.

During lambing time this year we lost 4 lambs and 1 sheep to sheep worrying. About 5 years ago one dog killed 24 lambs in one go. Every week we are aware of minor incidents of sheep worrying, fortunatly most don't result in death but do always result in stress on the animals.

Also this week we have sent some older sheep to slaughter. Out of 30 of them 24 of them were condemned due to Echinococcosis, a disease passed on to sheep from dog poo and only identifiable at slaughter.

Neosporosis is another disease passed on from dog poo do cattle. It causes the cattle to abort their calves.

Letting your dogs poo on farmland is directly putting farms out of business.

Letting your dogs 'play' with sheep causes death, even if your dog doesn't actually maul something at the time.

You wouldn't walk into a shop, knock down a display and break stuff without expecting to have to pay for damages. Why do people think that the countryside is fair game?

I'm all for live and let live, I want people to enjoy the countryside and support it. I also want people to realise that it's not just there for their amusement, that some people are trying to make (an increasingly small and desperate) living from it.

So no fish, birds, sheep or cows would be concieved if we stopped eating them? I don't think you've thought that one through have you?

You're either stupid or a goady fucker. Your grammar and spelling suggest the former, together with your capacity for logical thinking.

"Land that has been consistently sheep-grazed for centuries provides a habitat for all sorts of rare species: chalkhill butterflies, skylarks, burnt and early spider orchids and gloworms to name just a few. Ceasing grazing would result in massive loss of habitat and biodiversity."

This. And species going extinct lower down the food chain then affects species higher up the food chain.

and this

"We already have too many ponies with no economic value, because they breed and yet aren't in the food chain, nor are there enough people with the money and experience to keep them for pleasure. So we still kill them anyway, and unlike farm animals there are far less regulations about how they can be kept and how they can be slaughtered."

Free ranging ponies, e.g. on Exmoor or in the New Forest, produce more foals than the area can sustain. (If left to themselves, which I can assure you they are not, they would strip the area down and then all starve.) The surplus situation is particularly the case for males, seeing that each herd only requires one stallion and there is no way even the fluffiest of vegans is going to be able to convince a group of grown stallions to live happily together. In a purely natural state defeated stallions would move away somewhere and quite possibly be picked off by predators. We have no predators large enough to deal with this in the UK. (Re-introducing wolves into the area would not work because they need very large roaming areas and these are no longer available. Even in Sweden, which is 70% forest, wolves do move into built-up areas and kill dogs. Yes, dogs!).

The same is the case with feral cattle. You cannot persuade several bulls to co-exist peacefully in the same area. So the only answer is that your non-farmed grazing animals would have to be culled, too. As any conservationist would tell you.

Hang on, I don't know if I'm being dense. But people are letting their dogs off in your fields when they can see that there is loose livestock?

I'm a dog owner and have had family dogs my whole life and have never ever let dogs off in a field with loose livestock. Seriously who does that?!

Not going to lie there he been the odd incident walking down a beach or path when a stray sheep or lamb has jumped out and it's been hairy getting the dogs under control but tbh my primary concern is the livestock as I know it's my dogs that do them damage.

Wtf is wrong with people?

Also no you're definitely not being unreasonable

Aren't you killing these sheep anyway? So you are worried they might die a different way? hmm

Would you suggest to someone that instead of taking their ill, elderly cat to the vet to be put to sleep that they give it to their neighbour's dogs so it can be ripped limb from limb, quite literally? After all, you could say, it's just a different way of dying!

Animals going for slaughter are not loved and cared for all the way like a loved elderly cat. Starting with the fearsome journey in the truck, cramped with no room to stretch or lie down and often, although this is illegal, fasted and dehydrated to avoid mess they arrive somewhere you can see undercover videos of. Abuse is common. Some recent UK information here: www.animalaid.org.uk/nightmarish-scenes-uncovered-uk-slaughterhouse/

If they go to the middle east, the journey on the ships is horrendous, as is their death.

Having said that, animals are farmed and all we can do is work to make their lives as good as they can be. Apart from dogs, sheep free ranging on fells probably have a better life than many other farmed animal . Except for castration and tail docking without anesthetic, and shearing. www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/sheep/keyissues

The vegan society has made a report on practical ways land could be used if not for livestock farming. www.vegansociety.com/whats-new/blog/new-farming-future

OP I applaud your efforts to keep dogs away from the sheep and deplore ignorant and selfish people misusing the land. My ideal though, would be to see all animal farming phased out. With support given to farmers and industry during the change. As other PPs have said, this is no longer a particularly profitable industry now.

And the simply answer to not knowing which is a public footpath or what land is accessible is to go into the nearest bookshop and buy an OS map before you visit an area. It's all marked neatly on there.

Biber, I notice that the vegan website you gave the link to did not make any attempt to answer the very reasonable question about bio-diversity raised by a poster on that site. Another question nobody seemed prepared to answer is how exactly you are going to turn a farm in the Scottish Highlands or the Welsh mountains into soy-producing fields.

There is a reason why most of our vegetable production is in the east of England and most of our sheep production in the north and west. Not all soils will grow everything and a field sloping down a mountainside will not allow ploughing and water retention in the same way as a flat field in Essex or somewhere. And temperatures. If we need to grow basic crops in heated areas because we are using the wrong parts of the country, then we will contribute to over-use of fuel and consequently to animal suffering elsewhere.

I am all for more vegetarianism. But I am also for using the knowledge about the countryside built up by the people who actually work the countryside.

When someone begins nitpicking about grammar and trying to use personal insults on an online forum it normally indicates that they're lacking a coherent argument. I do hope this isn't the case with you dear GiantSteps. Please at least try to enlighten my simple mind as to how those 80 million fish that the Uk consumed last year wouldn't of been conceived if we were all Vegan.

The argument that entire species of farm animals would die out because we're not breeding and slaughtering Billions of them does not have much merit imo. Sure their population's would shrink significantly and the environment would be much the better for it, but there would be no chance of them becoming extinct.

Good One JacquesHammer , have you had the chance to read up on echinococcus in livestock yet?

Sadly I'm not sure signs would help. There was a local woman years ago who got injured by a bull while walking her dog, she was pretty badly hurt but the thing is there is no way she didn't know there was a bull there, there was no right of way across that field and big signs warning you about the bull and telling you it was private property, there was even a sign explaining that private property means you aren't allowed to walk your dogs in these fields and a poster about how many livestock had been lost the previous year to dogs (I think the farmer was getting a bit fed up) the stupid woman was interviewed by the local paper and actually said she didn't think it applied to her dog because he is small and he was only a puppy.

wouldn't of been conceived It's 'wouldn't have been'.

The "stick and flick" signs are, I believe, because it is preferable that people do that than bag the poo and leave them lying around. The best thing to do is to pick up the poo, bag it and take it home.

Everyone should ALWAYS pick up after their dog- it doesn't matter if it's in a field, on a beach, in a wood, on a pavement or wherever.

Incidentally OP, if you dog is running around your fields, how do you ensure that it isn't your own dog's poo spreading disease?

I don't like some current farming/ slaughter practices either biber. But blame the consumers and the supermarkets, not the farmers. I don't know any that wouldn't prefer the old, easy way of none factory farming, local humane slaughter, little red tape and a decent market value. But they don't get to choose.

Stop cattle being in the food chain though, and you won't improve anything for them. Instead they'll face the worse fate of unwanted horses that go to slaughter without the protection that comes from being intended for human consumption in the uk.

The valid calls for reform, such as banning live export, more local abattoirs and making ethical farming economically viable across the board get completely overlooked when they are combined with ludicrous suggestions. Such as arable farming everywhere, or disneyesque Utopias with pet pigs and dairy Bulls in wildlife conserves.

Of course cattle and sheep won't exist in anywhere near the same number as they do at present if they weren't been farmed for meat. Why would they? You may get the odd person who wants a few pet sheep but generally nobody is going to waste time and money feeding and looking after such animals if they're not going to make some money out if them at the end.

I'm currently in Cumbria and there's plenty of sheep out on the fells all looking very happy with their free range lifestyle. Yes, at some point they're going to the slaughter house but they've had a good life up till then.....I certainly wouldn't want to see them getting chased and ripped to bits by dogs just to get one over in the farmers! Nor would I want to see them sick due to infection caused by dog poo.

Article here about how sheep in the Lake District manage the fells through grazing.

www.visitcumbria.com/herdwick-sheep/

Why should your money-making ventures as a farmer who grows and slaughters innocent animals have precedence over the rest of the population out for a walk with or without their pet?

Firstly it's the OP's property so she is free to do as she wishes,

Secondly as mentioned, she grows food for others as they don't want to do it themselves.

Free ranging ponies, e.g. on Exmoor or in the New Forest, produce more foals than the area can sustain. (If left to themselves, which I can assure you they are not, they would strip the area down and then all starve.) The surplus situation is particularly the case for males, seeing that each herd only requires one stallion and there is no way even the fluffiest of vegans is going to be able to convince a group of grown stallions to live happily together. In a purely natural state defeated stallions would move away somewhere and quite possibly be picked off by predators.

Where I live in the new forest the stallions don't live with the herds of mares. At the same time every year a few stallions are trucked into the area, let loose to impregnate the mares and then rounded up again after a week or so and taken away again. The foals are then sold to the riding stables etc, so in order to stop the forest getting overrun as you stare it will maybe they should just stop trucking the stallions in every year??

biber

It's a case of supply and demand. People want meat, but don't always understand the processes behind the packet in the supermarket.

Sounds really traumatic for the animals and the op. I don't generally walk my dog on farmland he can't be trusted off the lead with livestock but after reading this thread I will be resolutely sticking to the abundance of public parks and national trust land around here.

mrsjames I'm not an expert on the new Forest, but Dartmoor hill ponies and Welsh ponies don't work that way. And neither does the general horse market. Unhandled foals don't tend to make good investments for riding stables. 4 years keep and a hell of a lot of experienced time, before you can even consider charging a client to ride it, let alone put Jane who has had 2yrs lessons on it, is far more expensive than just buying a safe pony.

Less of a problem with new forests, but Dartmoor hill and welsh ponies are only big enough for kids, or tiny teens/ adults and again most riding schools don't want a feral pony for this.

Yes some experienced owners buy them, but even then they tend to want something that isn't deformed through bad breeding, hence the decent stallions to improve them and stop inbreeding.

Many just end up at slaughter, or the worse fate of some clueless idiot 'rescuing' it when they have neither the knowledge or the money to do so properly.

Article here about how sheep in the Lake District manage the fells through grazing

This is a good article on the impact of grazing too:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/09/lake-district-world-heritage-site-george-monbiot

This is a good article on the impact of grazing too:

Behave. That article was written by someone famed as an activist for his socialist agenda and distain for traditional countryside values. In order to manage land, you need to first understand what that land requires to sustain habitat - it's a fundamental difference between people who manage land, and people who write about how they think land should be managed.

I'm an agent - there's enough of the fucking stuff for sale - buy some, manage it to the best of your ability and then tell me how much you enjoy having some clueless opinionated jobsworth telling you what to do with it. It grates after a while, I promise.

Scrowy
If you cant fence the path off, put up a lot of signs warning of the risk to dogs of Alabama Rot.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/pets-health/11490294/Mystery-dog-killing-disease-is-Alabama-Rot-say-vets.html

There's a special place in Hell for people who don't pick up after their dogs.
We have a lot of fields/woodland around here, and every footpath is a minefield of dog shit. Plus the bags full of shit and then dumped by the side (why????)
I honestly think dog owners have a kind of blindness whereby they just cannot see past their own wants.
Sorry about your lambs and sheep OP.
Definitely put up signs explaining about the damage these idiots are doing.

itsallgoingtobefine

The Lake District is not overgrazed. I would say I spend about 40-50 days a year fell walking in the Lakes and have done for 40 years. I have yet to see one bit of overgrazed land.....plenty of damage to footpaths by walkers though! And yes, I know I quite probably add to that damage!

Please at least try to enlighten my simple mind as to how those 80 million fish that the Uk consumed last year wouldn't of been conceived if we were all Vegan.

How many of the fish we eat are farmed rather than wild? Genuine question as I don't know the percentage, but I do know of a LOT of salmon & trout farms which breed specifically for food and/or sport.

I read the link provided by Biber, and noticed the issues they had with re-homing just 80 "retired" cows. This begs the question of what will happen to all the left over cattle if we go to strictly arable farming - I see that the "green" farmer wasn't prepared to give them room & board for the rest of their lives!

The Lake District is not overgrazed

Of course it is - where are all the trees?

The Lake District is not overgrazed

Of course it is - where are all the trees?

Erm grazing isn't trees, it's grasses & other ground plants?