This is an interesting video for what it does NOT show.
It was posted to a countryside Facebook group under the title of "Lamb on the Menu" with the original poster adding: "No prizes for guessing what this little fucker wanted for breakfast this morning."
I watched the video, but I did NOT see a fox hell-bent on killing a lamb; quite the opposite.
This fox keeps returning to a particular spot on the ground and shows very little interest in the lamb other than avoiding the head-butt of the ewe.
So what's going on here?
Likely the same thing that goes on with fox all over the world: a vixen interested in scavenging afterbirth and perhaps discarded testicles after they are banded and fall off.
I noted that fact in the comments, and then noted that sheep had a 10-25 percent rate of neo-natal mortality absent all predators due to the fact that sheep are poor parents, typically give birth to wet lambs in freezing cold weather, are often run on poor land offering too little food and shelter, and often have twins and even triplets.
I then asked a simple question: Is there video, anywhere, of a fox attacking a lamb or sheep? Not a fox predating on a dead lamb, or a picture of half a dozen lambs cut or chewed into pieces (always evidence of a setup shot or a massive frost kill abetted by poor keeping)?
I noted that there was plenty of video of the Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot, but damn if I could find video of fox predating on a living lamb. Not shortage of lurchers do that job, however!
And why why was that? Why do fox almost always leave living sheep and lambs alone? Simple: Fox are naturally wary. Why risk injury from a ewe (which outweighs the fox by 10-fold or more) when the field is littered with afterbirth, testicles, milk-rich sheep shit, and dead lambs?
A fellow group member piped in that the reason there was no video was that farmers did not stand around with a camera. But nope. that's not it. Game cameras are dirt cheap, litter field and forest, and they never sleep. Everyone and everything in the UK seems to be on CC-TV these days, from traffic roundabouts and kennels, to pastures, and turnout sheds. We all carry video cameras in our pockets these days. No shortage of camera on everything all the time.
And this is true not only in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, but also in France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Canada, and the US.
Sheep are everywhere and red fox are the most widely distributed wild canid in the world, and yet.... there seems to very little video of red fox attacking sheep. Had no one else noticed?
And the response?
My comments were deleted and I was banned from the group.
Which, I suppose, really does prove the point.
3 comments:
I have seen it (in a sheepdog training group) and I whole heartedly agree with you.
I live in Iceland (I am a sheepkeeper myself, sheep and lambs are free range here over the summermonths), here it's the arctic fox that is demonised by the farmers (listening to them you'd think they are the size of a timberwolf) and hunted as vermin, same nonsensical arguments and not a shred of evidence of actual predation of lambs. And an arctic fox is significantly smaller than the european red fox.
To be honest the UK farmers could do to learn how their New Zealand counterparts do things with sheep. The New Zealanders have no subsidies on their land or sheep, so everything has to be optimised, including and especially the sheep.
Over here in the UK, sheep are shorn in summer, long after they have lambed. In Australia and New Zealand, sheep are shorn a while before they lamb, because in doing so the mother sheep tend to feel the cold a bit more and find nicer, warmer places to lamb than an unsheared sheep will do. Sheep aren't completely daft, but they're not very bright so tricks like this help cut mortality.
New Zealand sheep are specially bred to lamb easily without human assistance. Any sheep that has difficulty in lambing is culled, and not bred from. Similarly sheep prone to foot-rot, and prone (either physically or behaviourally) to getting rigged on their backs and thus unable to get up again without assistance are also culled. The New Zealanders are attempting to breed a sheep that can look after its self and its young with only extremely minimal human intervention.
From what I've seen on countryside forums in England. It's the dog walkers with dogs off lead that kill sheep and lambs. Apparently, they have 'walking rights' in many rural areas and off lead dogs are a huge problem for them. Ravens are a problem, blinding the newborn lambs by picking out their eyes, introduced eagles are now becoming too in some areas. Now fox in England are bold and several falconers have seen the neighborhood fox take their hawks right off the perches while they are watching out the kitchen window. Or harass their birds while in the mews at night. Or kill their hawks on game in the field. Falconers here in the US have problems with avian predators pirating kills (or killing) their hawk on game, coyotes, bobcats, or stray dogs and cats killing hawks on game. That is why time is of the essence in finding a hawk that has made a kill.
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