Death by sheep

[grenfell]

A strange one that has perhaps been missed by mainstream media but a cautionary tale nontheless for smallholders . Seems a couple of "hobby farmers" in New Zealand were killed by an animal on their farm.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sheep-sus ... d-and-wife

[Arzosah]

I hadn't seen that but it makes me think of Matt Baker's mum when he and his family moved into his parents' farm temporarily as she broke a leg looking after her sheep. There were a couple of seasons of programmes about the farm during lockdown and the aftermath. She's an experienced shepherd too. My sister and I regularly go on a country trail from a local National Trust house, and we've become extremely wary of the cows. Sheep are okay, but not cows, especially because my sister's actively frightened of them.

[Ara]

On our smallholding we kept a few sheep. One day when I was out feeding them, the ram butted our large dog and knocked him over. Not content with that, he also decided to butt me. (I suspect I wasn't walking up the hill to the sheep feeding troughs quickly enough for him.) He obviously wasn't too serious as he was quite gentle but after that I always took a stick (shepherd's crook style) with me if I was on my own in the field with him. I never hit him or anything like that but I could see he knew what a stick was for and would only eat out of my hand when I put the stick down. All animals deserve respect, particularly those whose history you don't know. As for cows, they are something else and I would never even walk along our side of the fence if our neighbour's cows were on the other side. They did once trample the fence down because they thought the water in our field was easier to get to than the water in theirs so perhaps I wasn't that daft after all.

[Kiwififer]

Interesting factoid. I think there’s more coos in the North Island, certainly in the Mooloo which is Waikato (south of Auckland) as there’s more money to be made from coos.

New Zealand lamb though is outstanding not that we would know these days, it all goes to China or the Middle East.

[diamond lil]

My son worked on a farm when he was in high school. The farm manager ended up in hospital with several broken ribs after a cow attacked him - then rolled on him when he was on the ground. Cows are dangerous animals!

[jansman]

My son worked on a farm when he was in high school. The farm manager ended up in hospital with several broken ribs after a cow attacked him - then rolled on him when he was on the ground. Cows are dangerous animals!

I can remember many years ago when we were ironically catching foxes with our dogs ( lurchers) at night. Our boys were trained to avoid livestock - and were very good - but one night we had a horned ram go for mine and boy did it make a mess! Cost a few Bob with the vet I can tell you!
Another time when I was working as a slaughterman I had a bull take me out and bust two ribs,and that hurt too! I appreciate where your son was diamond lil.

[diamond lil]

I won't go through a field with cows in it now, not ever.