Hunting with dogs Bill - 'We lost 15 lambs in one year to foxes' - Farmer asks for 'sensible decisions to be made'

Farmer Brian Turtle said “we do our best to farm in an environmentally responsible way, as most farmers do, we’ve been using low-emission slurry spread, and we've been direct drilling to reduce carbon”.

"We keep beef cattle, pigs and sheep and we grow a wee bit of grain for for our own use.

"But I want to talk to you this morning about something we know only too well as sheep farmers, and that's the damage that foxes can do".

He said: "In our farm business, we've lost a right lot of lambs over the years, before and during lambing.

"If I can can first hand tell you what can happen during lambing, a fox can take one of a pair of twins or take a triplet, while the ewe’s still giving birth to another one.

"So the ewe starts to lamb. She punches out the first one. She gets up and she licks it. Once it's sort of straightened up a wee bit, she'll lie down again to to birth the next one, and that's when Mr Fox comes along and goes away it – disappears.

"And I have seen that actually seen that first hand in 2025.

"We had a particularly bad attack with a group of 40 ewes, lambing, and we actually lost 15 lambs, and that's about £2,000 pounds".

He added that fox attacks also impact “the free range egg men”.

He said what goes against the Hunting with Dogs Bill for a farm like ours “is that we are able to protect and keep our fox numbers under control, and we need just practical, effective ways to protect livestock"..

He added that farming in 2026 is under lots of pressure as “Bovine TB is rampant”.

"Our herd of cattle are all right at the minute, but I think nearly every one of our neighbours are down with TB, and that's difficult,” he added.

" We've a tax system that's not easy, and we don't need another pressure like protecting livestock.

“I think maybe a lot of folk wouldn't realize that that local hunts provide a very valued fallen stock collection service.

“They remove dead animals very promptly from farms at a reduced cost, cheaper than the commercial alternatives, and that reduces biohazards.

"So, so there is a big service there, and if this bill goes ahead, we risk losing that service-a valued service.”

Imploring the AERA committee to ‘make the right decision’, he said: “We face a lot more losses with lambs, and a very valued form of pest control will disappear.

"'m just asking those of you that are making these decisions just to listen to farmers, to people on the ground that walk the walk and live the life and think carefully about the long-term consequences of this.

" We just we're not looking special treatment.

"We're just asking for practical means to protect our livestock, to make a living, to be sustainable”.