Sheep farmers in Donegal are looking to the skies to stop sheep rustlers.
A meeting held this week heard about plans to implant GPS trackers in sheep in order to deter thieves and to help restock hill land and commonage to manage vegetation.
Representatives from farmer organisations, insurance companies, government agricultural departments and police forces from both sides of the border met in Teagasc’s offices in Stranrolar, to discuss the issue of sheep theft in the northwest.
The Irish Farmer’s Journal reports how Gerald Roarty from Donegal Animal Hospital said that the level of sheep stealing in Donegal was ‘at an epidemic’ at present.
“Sheep stealing in Donegal is at an epidemic at the moment,” Donegal vet and meeting chair Gerald Roarty said. He also said that farmers were afraid to put sheep onto hill land due to continued livestock thefts from uplands.
Various speakers said that fines and penalties for thieves caught stealing sheep were too lenient and that another deterrent was needed to stop livestock thefts and allow farmers to restock uplands to have land in Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) to claim subsidy support.
Tracker
The purpose of the meeting was to establish if an appetite was present among farmers on both sides of the border to apply for funding to help cover costs of GPS trackers for sheep to deter thieves and also allow farmers to heft (retain) sheep onto hill land without the need for fencing.
The GPS tracker is implanted subcutaneously into a sentinel ewe so that the animal does not enter the food chain. The device is around half the size of a cigarette lighter and works via satellite to alert the farmers when the sentinel sheep moves outside a set boundary.
The device has its own battery which lasts up to 40 hours. However, the programme that the group are looking at only sends alerts, and therefore switches the tracker on once it moves outside the boundary, so battery life will not be an issue.
Funders
Gerald said that a company in England has been identified to manufacture the technology. “We are looking to a number of funders, the sheep forum in Europe is one of them. Also we are looking at Leader in the Department of Agriculture, Peace IV is another one to fund maybe 50 or 100 of them. Obviously the more we can order, the cheaper they will be,” he said.
Some concerns with the technology were addressed, such as the possibility of trackers being used by government agricultural departments on both sides of the border to identify if hills were being grazed properly. Gerald pointed out that inspectors can already monitor this on all farms remotely with existing satellite technology.
