Farmer tells of his shock as sheep is skinned alive in open field
A FARMER has expressed his shock after finding one of his heavily pregnant sheep skinned, with all four of its legs chopped off and its throat slit.
Part-time farmer Arron Lamont made the grisly discovery in his field between Kilrea and Rasharkin early yesterday morning.
He has reported the matter to the PSNI but said he wanted to warn other farmers of what had happened.
Arron said he initially thought a dog was responsible for killing the pedigree Dorset ewe.
But he said there is no way an animal could have carried out such an attack.
“It was like a butcher job,” he said.
He added that wire fencing had been damaged and the gate into the pen was open.
He thinks the attacker pulled the ewe down the field where they cut its throat with a knife.
Arron said that the hedge sits lower than the road, so they couldn’t be seen.
He believes it is there that the pregnant animal was hung up on barbed wire to be skinned and had its legs cut off in the barbaric attack.
“You can see the clean lines of the knife, and the wool and the skin was cut off — not pulled off,” he said last night.
Arron explained he had been trying to build up his flock, but now another of his sheep has lambed early because of what he believes is trauma.
The lorry driver said he was keeping the horrific story from his two young children — a son and daughter aged seven and six respectively — as it was too disturbing.
He described those behind the grim attack as “total scum to do this to an innocent animal”, which he believed would have suffered.
“How anyone could do this to an animal is beyond me,” he said.
“Someone knew what they were doing.
“This wasn’t a five minute job. “It wasn’t a pretty sight to come across this morning,” he added.