Dog walkers are leaving such a mess
‘ONGOING BATTLE’ AGAINST PEOPLE NOT PICKING UP AFTER THEIR PETS
A DERBYSHIRE farmer has told of disgusting scenes on his farm as dog owners regularly let their pets foul on his land and fail to clean up after them.
James Wig, who owns a farm in Middleton-by-Wirksworth, near Matlock, also runs a caravan park on his property to boost his earnings.
He says Covid lockdowns and an increased number of dog walkers passing through his land mean visitors often encounter dog poo on its central walkway.
He also says the excrement poses health risks to his valuable cattle.
James said: “It’s ridiculous, I see an awful lot of it and it’s unpleasant for people on the site because it’s regularly on the trackway that leads down to the caravans. The other day there was around 16 bags of dog poo.
“It can also kill and blind my calves and cause them to be infected with listeria. That’s the ongoing battle that you have.”
Listeria is a bacterium which causes the illness listeriosis. In most people, listeriosis has no symptoms or only causes mild symptoms such as a high temperature, aches and pains, chills, sickness, and diarrhoea.
It can, however, cause more severe health complications for medically vulnerable people. It can be caught by eating infected meat.
This comes as Derbyshire farmers are saying that they are having to manage their finances hour by hour and diversify to maximise income due to price rises and diminishing Government grants.
Fertiliser used to cultivate 10 acres of land currently costs £400 – four times what it cost last year – and is expected to rise further.
This situation has been worsened by a recent spate of dog attacks on farmers’ livestock.
Dog walkers have been warned that farmers can legally shoot their dogs if they pose a danger to livestock, and have been urged to keep them on a lead after sheep were attacked on a farm in Calow in Chesterfield last month.
The chairman of the Derbyshire branch of the National Farmers Union, Andrew Critchlow, said: “There’s been a huge change since lockdown, and dog numbers have gone up anyway.
“There’s a wider range of people coming to the countryside for exercise, and that’s good. But they are unfamiliar with the countryside code and keeping Britain tidy.
“It’s not ingrained into children nowadays like it used to be. It was with me.”