AS lambing season appproaches, one local farmer was recently given a taste of what is to come across the shire when he welcomed a dozen lambs to his flock ahead of the season.
According to local farmer Billy Mahoney, on a cold autumn morning in Merrijig he was met by a tragic sight when he went to check upon a group of eager lambs who had joined his flock early.
Seven lambs lay dead in the shady spot beneath a gum that they, and their mothers, had encamped in every night since their birth.
One lay a little further up the hill.
Its wool stained with a trickle of crimson from puncture wounds on its flank, its pained bleating beginning to fade.
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Mr Mahoney said the lambs’ mothers, disoriented with trauma, were lingering nearby in the hope that their babies would stand up.
They wouldn’t.
According to Mr Mahoney, outside of the lambing season, the wild dogs that leave the dark of their bushland nest to feed each night travel kilometres into the open to feed on mutton. and typically pick off a ewe or two in a field full of fully grown sheep.
But when those fields are filled with lambs, he said, it’s a different matter.
“They kill the lambs for fun,” Mr Mahoney said.
“They will tackle one and take their feed, eating it while it is still alive.
“Then when they are full, they will have some fun.
“They chase lamb after lamb, picking them up in their teeth and discarding them when they become distracted by another lamb.”
Mr Mahoney said that on 12 May it was seven lambs dead because there were seven lambs there to kill.
During lambing season, when large farms that play home to thousands of sheep are joined by thousands of lambs, he said the numbers will be higher.
Mr Mahoney, who has worked the Mansfield Shire land all his life, said he has never seen the wild dog problem as bad as it currently is.
Having lost several valuable ewe studs last month, he turned to the old ways of the shepherd.
He spent nights wandering the cold dark of the hillsides when the rest of the world was tucked up in bed.
Where he went, he said, he went with a rifle and a thermal scope to keep his sheep—and himself—safe.
When he put down three wild dogs on his land, in the space of a couple of weeks, he hoped he had solved the problem of the pack that was killing and feeding on his land.
Weeks passed with no attacks on his sheep.
But the night of 11 May and the seven dead lambs, he said, is a reminder that this problem will not go away so easily.
Mr Mahoney said that one of his neighbours has trapped and shot a dozen wild dogs on his property in the last 12 months alone.
In that time, the dogs have killed over 200 sheep upon his neighbour’s property, he said.
“They come from out of the bush beyond the hill, they get through the fences and past the traps," said Mr Mahoney.
“We’ve seen packs of two and three and we’ve seen lone dogs coming out of the bush to hunt on farms.
"My neighbour called me recently to tell me he'd seen a dog come down off the hill altogether, he said it was near my house."
According to Mr Mahoney, you can often tell it’s a pack by how the sheep are killed.
Born hunters, he said, they have an innate instinct for the kill and each individual dog repeats a singular signature kill.
“Some go after the hamstring, others the flank, and some go straight to the throat," he said.
“The sheep don’t stand much of a chance against these dogs, they’re massive.
“I’m very concerned about what happens in Merrijig and the rest of Mansfield Shire during lambing season.”
In light of this and many similar stories echoing across the shire, the upcoming lambing season is shaping as a critical period for local farmers.
