Dogs wipe out farmer’s livestock

It’s the Christmas season and retired school principal turned farmer John Daisley was looking forward to benefitting from the animals he had been rearing for some time now.

But that will not happen, as on November 30, at around 2:33 a.m., a pack of wild dogs took advantage of the cover provided by a trough system that was hitting the island and killed six goats and two sheep belonging to the Peruvian Vale resident.{{more}}

Daisley said he only managed to save one animal and is calling on the relevant authorities to do something about the many wild dogs that roam the country.

The elderly man said that the morning the attack took place, he heard the loud barking of the dogs, but he could not see what was happening from his house, which was 30 yards away from where the noise was coming from, and he could not venture outside because of the pounding rain.

The Peruvian Vale man said that when he eventually got to go outside at around 5 a.m., he did not expect to see what he saw and the sight of his dead animals saddened him.

“I went outside to see what the animals were doing and I met all of them lying dead on the ground. I could do nothing but bury them and only one survived,” said the farmer, who revealed that the dead animals had gruesome wounds, including slashed necks, ripped out stomachs and ears bitten off. Only one lamb that was not tied to a stake survived.

“I feel real disturbed about the matter. It was a pack of dogs and you distinctly heard sounds that tell you there were several dogs,” noted Daisley, who has no idea if the dogs that annihilated his sheep and goats have owners or are wild.

He puts the loss to him at around EC$1,600, but was told by his brother, who is an agriculturist, that the police would have to know the owner or owners of the dogs to do something about the incident.

Daisley said that he has enquired, but no one knows where the dogs came from, but other persons in the area suffered similar losses a few days after his incident.

“If I find whose dogs, I would like to get paid,” said Daisley, who has not made a formal report to the police.

He said that he uses the animals to supplement his income and last sold a few animals in May. He said that while his pigs were not killed because they were fenced in, he is sceptical about rearing sheep and goats again.

“I think this is a serious problem and people need to protect their animals, because when you spend so much time rearing your animals and so on, you develop a love for them and not only the money that you are going to sell them for and then for them to be destroyed one night, the whole farm just gone through the mouths of dogs, it’s sad,” said Daisley.

The retired educator is of the opinion that this is a big problem in the country, as he has heard from a number of other persons from different areas of the country who have been similarly affected.

Daisley thinks that the responsible authorities should have a plan to deal with free-ranging dogs, as he sees a number of dogs while driving at night.

He said also that persons should be tying and securing their dogs.

“There are dogs that don’t trouble anyone, but there are dogs that trouble people and rush at you,” said Daisley, who added that he knows that there are pit bulls that roam free at nights.(LC)