Dogs Killing Sheep - Vic

[Entourage]

Wandering pets are a HUGE problem, both town and country.

Quite true. WE have a neighbor who has roaming rottweilers who have mauled and killed their own sheep!, The rotties have never come across to our land, but they would be shot if they did. Now we have the same neighbor has a problem with his roaming pigs, up to 20 escaping into their paddocks and now going through electric fences and coming into our land. They have destroyed our vege garden, flower beds and have generally been making a nuisance of themselves digging up other areas of our place and making our dogs bark. After the ranger was called out and still the pigs were running riot, enough was enough and my mother called the neighbor to tell him that if she sees any pigs on our property, they will be shot. We havnt seen them for nearly two weeks now. :-)

As to using Maremas on sheep and cattle properties, They can be more of a nuisance than anything else to a large property owner. When your lambing and you have a problem with a ewe with a lamb stuck, you have to catch her in the paddock and who needs to be attacked by a marema whilst your trying to help a ewe pass her lamb? Same for a Marema working with your herding dogs. To much of a pain in the backside. Having worked on a large sheep and cattle property, we always baited for foxes and didnt have that much of a problem, there was more damage due to crows picking out the lambs eyes.