Up to 50 sheep have been missing from the Brandon Hill area of Co. Kilkenny for several weeks without a “track or trace,” according to the farmers.
The sheep belong to Sean Cahill and his father Edward, who farm on the hill near Graiguenamanagh that have access to 1,000ac of commonage.
Sean Cahill told Agriland that each year at the beginning of August, he and his family will bring the ewes and lambs down for weaning, as they had been grazing on the mountain since June.
However, this year, over the course of the three days of bringing the ewes and lambs from the hill coming up to August 1, the Cahills discovered they were missing 100 sheep.
While they initially thought the sheep may have been in an area known as ‘the big wood’, following a search through the woods with several others, including family members, they recovered just five sheep from this search.
Over the course of the following days, they found and rounded up more ewes and lambs, but there is currently 50 sheep missing, consisting of 23 ewes and the rest, lambs.
“There is no track or trace of them on the hill. There is something seriously wrong.”
The Cahills have been in close contact with the other farmers around Brandon Hill, but there is still no sign of sheep.
Cahill said that usually when their sheep go astray, the neighbouring farmers will likely spot them and immediately let them know where the sheep are.
The lambs are marked with a ‘C’ with a blue brand or their neck, and the ewes are tagged and marked with a ‘CC’ on the right hand side on their back.
The sheep are mostly white-faced Cheviots, some with horns arising from a Lanark cross.
Cahill said: “We thought it was our count at first, and we double counted. I had the number of sheep that we pit out on to the hill written in my diary, and it was not adding up to what we got back down.
“It would be hard to get them off the hill, unless they got them on the road and the sheep stayed running down the road on to the laneways and they got them somewhere like that, I don’t know.”
The Cahills are now faced with deciding how to plan for next year.
“What’ll we do next year? Do we let the sheep out on the hill? If we don’t let them out, then we’ll have to cut back on numbers because grass is tight.”
Normally, the ewes and lambs are let up to the hill on June 1,and they come back down off the hill on August 1 for weaning, before the ewes go back on to hill until around October 10.
The ram is then put in with the ewes and they are kept off the hill for the winter.
Marts and meat processing factories have been notified of the missing sheep, along with hauliers and those attending mart sales.
Cahill described the missing sheep as “sickening” as the farm had “a woeful bad crop of ewe lambs” this year due to the weather.
In particular, Cahill said this impacted his involvement in the Borris Ewe Breeders’ sale as he didn’t have as many ewe lambs ready as he wanted for the sale.