SCORES of lambs plunged to their deaths after a concrete well cover in their field was removed.

The farmer Clive Taylor, 62, found them dead at the bottom of an 8ft-deep disused well.

It had been covered by a slab weighing more than 31 stone which Mr Taylor believes must have been removed deliberately, possibly as a thoughtless prank, exposing a 2ft wide hole.

He said: “I walk the fields usually twice a day. We walked it on Sunday morning and you could tell there was something wrong. A ewe came calling out and I looked round the field and thought there weren’t enough lambs there.”

He said there had been about 150 lambs with 100 ewes. When he noticed the cover had been moved and looked down the well he initially thought that 10 lambs were floating there.

But when he started pulling them out, with the help of some friends, he found 48.

“They’d all been lying on top of each other in the water. There may be more still in there,” he said.

“One farmer said do I think someone chucked them in, but I don’t think they could have.”

The lambs, which died at Broomcroft Farm, near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, were worth £5,000.

“The amazing thing is we might not be insured,” Mr Taylor added. “We have to prove it was a malicious act.

“But the police can’t find fingerprints on a stone slab and the ground’s been so dry there’s no trace of anyone being there.”