STRAY DOGS WREAK HAVOC ON LIVESTOCK

MANZINI - Stray dogs have wreaked havoc on livestock at Ngculwini area.

So serious is the occurrence that one farmer has lost over 21 goats. The unknown dogs had been attacking and killing livestock, mainly goats in the area and according to one of the affected farmers, Mmiso Gwebu, he had suffered an immense loss due to the damage. He said the dogs attacked and killed 21 of his goats in the past three months.Gwebu said he should be having over 100 goats by now, but the numbers have decreased significantly due to the indiscriminate killing by the stray dogs. 

He said one of his neighbours had lost four goats to the stray dogs, while another had his attacked, but luckily it miraculously survived after being attended to by the owner. “I have lost in excess of 21 goats as we speak and the numbers are still going up as I am starting to lose the goats’ kids as they do not get milk from their mothers that were killed by the stray dogs,” the farmer said.

Shocked

On September 17, 2020, he said he found remains of three of his goats in the veld and that while he was still shocked by the discovery, the following day he found remains of four more. “Thereafter, it became a norm that every now and then I will be pulling carcases of my goats from the veld. I am at a point where I feel like I am literally being held to ransom by these dogs,” he said.

He also disclosed that there was once a time when the dogs entered his kraal at night, but luckily family members were woken up by the noise of the goats which were bleating and they chased the dogs away before they could cause any damage. As a result, he said he might be forced to cut his losses by disposing all the goats because he feared that he might lose all of them to the vicious stray dogs. 

Even when Gwebu was at work, he said he would receive calls notifying him that some goats were found dead with dog bite wounds. “The painful thing is that the dogs attack, kill the goats and leave them like that and do not feast on them,” Gwebu said.

In that regard, he said it was clear that the dogs did not kill because of hunger, but did so for fun.  

Breed

Again, he said judging by the scars on the goats, it was clear that the dogs that killed the livestock were a special breed. Gwebu said he personally suspected that the dogs were boar dogs. 

Again, he said they never ate the goats which were killed by the unknown dogs because they feared that they might contract rabies. He said they disposed some of the goats, while sometimes they would find that smaller dogs, which found their livestock dead, had feasted on it.

The farmer said they had not yet identified which homestead the dogs were coming from. Had the owner been identified, he said, they would have already laid charges against him or her. He added that they were currently in the process of tracing the owner and were ready to follow the necessary process of soliciting compensation for the loss. 

He argued that the owner of the dog was liable to pay for the losses because it was his animals that were roaming around killing goats of the community members.

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