Picking up dead stock

[Estate fencing.]

Just a thought while going round sheep.
How long until we have to leave dead stock about for feed the predators, there's loads about now and must thrive this time of year with outside lambing but come June must be a real struggle for them to find enough food.

 

[neilo]

Just a thought while going round sheep.
How long until we have to leave dead stock about for feed the predators, there's loads about now and must thrive this time of year with outside lambing but come June must be a real struggle for them to find enough food.

Loads of predators about, or loads of deadstock?

 

[Estate fencing.]

Loads of predators about, or loads of deadstock?

Cheeky bugger.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Realistically, it's more natural than being carted round the countryside in a vehicle using fossil fuels and then be incinerated using fossil fuels, when, as you say, they don't hang around for long. We get the odd deer hit on the road and you don't even see the bones after a few months.

Dead animals and dead wood are part of our ecosystem that has been tidied away for so long.

I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being encouraged .

 

[David1968]

I think you're confusing predators with scavengers. True predators will manage just fine as all the young rabbits, pigeons etc start to break cover. The scavengers can do one.

Easier to pick up a dead body now than gather up bags of bones later on.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

I think you're confusing predators with scavengers. True predators will manage just fine as all the young rabbits, pigeons etc start to break cover. The scavengers can do one.

Easier to pick up a dead body now than gather up bags of bones later on.

Foxes and badgers are dual purpose breeds.

And why pick up the bones when they are made of calcium magnesium and phosphorus?

 

[Jackov Altraids]

It would be very logical to be able to designate a suitable area as 'scavenger reserve' where any animal corpses could be left. The speed with which nature reclaims a body can be staggering.
It is equally amazing how you occasionally get the odd corpse that nothing will touch. They must sense its deseased or something.

 

[Tarw Coch]

Realistically, it's more natural than being carted round the countryside in a vehicle using fossil fuels and then be incinerated using fossil fuels, when, as you say, they don't hang around for long. We get the odd deer hit on the road and you don't even see the bones after a few months.

Dead animals and dead wood are part of our ecosystem that has been tidied away for so long.

I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being encouraged .

I was in complete agreement up until the last line, I just don’t see that happening.

 

[Chris123]

They are eating the live ones here at the moment. Bloody crows taking the eyes and tongues of the lambs as they are being born.

 

[Estate fencing.]

They are eating the live ones here at the moment. Bloody crows taking the eyes and tongues of the lambs as they are being born.

That’s why I said it, you see them eating a dead one so you pick it up then they start pestering the live ones and lamb just being born.

 

[Dry Rot]

I believe (without looking it up) that the law requires dead livestock (isn't that what they call an oxymoron?) to be buried or otherwise disposed of within 48 hours. Livestock is mainly domesticated farm animals. Wild animals don't have to be buried unless commercially processed, e.g. shot as in deer stalking, so the gralloch can be left on the hill. But I could be wrong.

When out looking for a lost dog in Ireland in the 1970s, I came across a collection of 'fallen' livestock as the OP seems to suggest. Dead livestock simply dumped in a field. It was not a pretty sight... or smell. I have never seen so many magpies in one place. As for returning nutrients to the soil, I think the concentration of 'waste products' in such a small area was probably counter productive with the resultant effluent poisoning the ground. The battle fields of old must have been truly horrific places. Black rotting corpses as the flesh deteriorated leaving black parchment-like skin stretched over the skeletons.

 

[Tamar]

Catch 22.

You pick up the dead lambs and the rogue foxes and badgers eat the live ones.

You don't pick them up and that just encourages more foxes and vermin to invade your farm !

 

[Poorbuthappy]

It's the far more natural way.
But it does encourage an increase of 1 particular scavenger that is better not to encourage.
Blowflies.

 

[unlacedgecko]

I listen to quite a few podcasts from agriculture around the world. There was on based in the US and the producer composts all dead stock and their cull cows.

Apparently the NPK value of a cull cow was exceeding the sale price. Global beef shortage means this may have changed.

 

[tinsheet]

I listen to quite a few podcasts from agriculture around the world. There was on based in the US and the producer composts all dead stock and their cull cows.

Apparently the NPK value of a cull cow was exceeding the sale price. Global beef shortage means this may have changed.

done properly with straw there should be no smell and produces a lot of heat and great compost/fertilizer etc!
Mate rang up defra regarding trying this system they poo pood it big time so he said he was going to try it anyway

works well, got to be clean straw and not just burying them in the dung heap.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Catch 22.

You pick up the dead lambs and the rogue foxes and badgers eat the live ones.

You don't pick them up and that just encourages more foxes and vermin to invade your farm !

I think some people take the dead lambs a long way from the sheep to draw the foxes away from the main flock. The lambs soon disappear. Or so I'm told anyway. Never seen it done myself obviously.

 

[neilo]

Maybe the trick is to lose enough that the foxes & badgers are too fat to bother the live ones?

A friend used to regularly put a few dead lambs about in fox feeding areas, away from the flock. Never a problem, until the landlord decide to have a Sunday morning stroll around the estate with her labs, who came running back to her with treasure.
She wasn’t very happy, and gave my friend’s dad a lecture about why you shouldn’t do that as it would encourage foxes to take lambs, or some other nonsense somebody had told her. He obviously laughed with his son after she had gone.

 

[Anymulewilldo]

A friend used to regularly put a few dead lambs about in fox feeding areas

We do that... but the high seat is set 60yrds away record this year is 3 in a 2 hour stint. Far cry for the days of 18-20 a night until we caught the RSPCA van on the neighbouring properties access bridge one night!!

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

I had a dead one this morning that was Cast on top of a Badger Sett. The Ravens and Crows had killed it and by the look of the numbers feeding on it there will be very little left by tonight.
Perhaps the Badgers will tidy up the bones!!

Trouble is it is 100 yards from a busy Footpath!!!