A dog has run rampant on at least eight properties in Medbury over the past 11 days, leaving behind a trail of dead and mutilated sheep and lambs.
One property owner only has one lamb left from his 10 ewes, after a dog ran amuck through the mob.
Another farmer has lost 10 Dorset Down stud ewes valued at $400 each, one in recent days.
He only bought the ewes this season and had yet to get a lamb from them and is gutted they died such an horrific death.
He is now mounting game cameras in the hope of catching the culprit in the act.
The farmer, who also works off farm, runs about 200 ewes and says he has also lost a few lambs which are not even a week old, and at least two have been left bloodied from rips to the top of their head and body.
‘‘It is pretty easy to see they were attacked by a dog. I don’t know how they got away.
‘‘And it is not just about the ones that are attacked.
‘‘It is also about a dog running around in your ewes that are lambing and stressing them,’’ he says.
The farmer says farming is hard enough at the moment without the added stress of stock being killed.
The property owner who lost at least nine new born lambs says there will be no stopping the dog now that it has a taste for killing and mauling the stock.
The lifestyle property owner says he runs a small mob of sheep and keeps the lambs for mutton.
‘‘We will probably have to buy lambs now for our house muttons next year,’’ he says.
At least another six property owners have also lost stock, while others have noticed the occasional lamb missing, or some wool in a paddock which appears to have been pulled from a sheep.
The dog attacks the stock in the mid-riff area, dragging them down before killing them. Some of the stock have been left for dead, but are still clinging to life, meaning the farmer has had to put them down.
Those spoken to say it is a ‘‘sickening sight’’ to see their stock mauled to death and was certainly not a very nice death for their stock.
They want others in the Medbury area — near Hawarden — to be aware what is happening or they could ‘‘end up in the same boat’’.
While the police have been informed and are urging property owners to report any stock losses on the 105 police website.
Property owners said trying to prove whose dog, or what the dog looked like that killed their sheep was difficult as they have not been able to catch it in the act.
They say the owner of the dog should have a pretty fair idea what it had been up to.
‘‘It would have to have blood on it.’’
