A FARMER has spoken out after members of the public drove onto private land, leaving a gate open, and allowing sheep out into the road.

Oliver Jay has 20 of his own sheep on a field belonging to his grandfather Geoffrey Harris, and helps him to run the farm near Moorswater, Liskeard.

Recently Oliver arrived at the field to find that a gate had been left open and the flock had escaped.

It looked to him like a member of the public had driven off the public road and down a farm track, opening the gate and letting themselves in.

“I could see tyre tracks and all my sheep were out there in the lane, wandering about quite close to the road,” he said.

“I could see the prints from the people’s wellies. It looked like they’d parked their car to have a walk in our field.”

Oliver says that there is a public right of way that crosses the middle of the field to a bridge – but that the path is a long way from the gate which had been opened – and in any case, it’s a footpath, not for vehicles.

“If they’d have been there a few days before, I might have been dragging their car off the field with the tractor, because we were dung-spreading,” he said.

Oliver says that he understands it isn’t always clear where a footpath runs, and he would always approach people in a calm way to explain. He added: “Where there’s a footpath, everyone has the right to use it, but we wish people would have respect and use common sense.”

But when he sees people with dogs off leads, where there is livestock, it does make him angry.

“Around six months ago we had somebody walk up across the field and let a dog off the lead,” he said.

“A neighbour called us to say it had chased all the sheep up into the corner of the field. Although it didn’t attack the sheep, because of the stress on them, we lost two ewes.”

By the time Oliver arrived, the dog walker had got back onto the path but refused to put the dog on a lead and, he says, reacted badly to being asked.

“If people have a dog off the lead I would be pretty angry, because it shows they’re not taking responsibility,” said Oliver.

“People sometimes say ‘well I’ve got the right to walk here’ when they’re off the path, or ‘My dog won’t chase sheep’. I think sometimes people are thinking of their own animals, but not ours. Farmers can’t afford to lose stock. We’ve had four or five incidents of sheep worrying recently. It’s quite annoying really.

“I want people to know we haven’t got a problem with people using footpaths – and we can’t stop them – but they need to respect it.”