A FARMER has appealed to dog owners to keep their pets on a leash when walking through fields with livestock after one of his lambs had an ear ripped off.

Ron Colledge of White Lea Farm, near Easington Colliery, said the lamb did not recover from the attack and all it was good for after that was “home use”.

He spoke out after out the culprit Craig Yeomans was ordered by magistrates to pay him £179 in compensation for the damage caused.

The 25-year-old of John Street, Easington Colliery, pleaded guilty to being the owner of a dog worrying livestock, when he appeared at Peterlee Magistrates Court.

Mr Colledge said the court case arose out of incident on May Bank Holiday weekend.

He said: “I was having lunch when I saw sheep running down the field.

“A Staffordshire bull terrier had managed to get hold of one of my lambs.

“My worker managed to get the dog off and it bounded away. It didn’t even have a lead.

“I took the owner’s details, which I later handed to the police when they arrived.”

He added: “The dog had ripped an ear off the lamb, leaving it hanging on by only half an inch of flesh, which a vet had to remove. The lamb did not recover and I could not sell it and all it was good for was home use.

“When people are passing fields with stock they should keep their animals under control. But they they don’t do that and it’s a criminal offence.

“If that dog had been in a village and savaged a cat it would be all over the place. But we don’t get that. And this is our livelihood.

“It has happened to me many times before. This time I have been extremely lucky and managed to get this person prosecuted and taken to court. I am over the moon that it resulted in a prosecution.

“I wanted to get him to court to prove to people that these matters will get prosecuted and the culprits and will pay for it.”

Mr Colledge said he had previously seen other people in his field with dogs off the leash, but whenever he remonstrated all they did was hurl obscenities at him.

“I am 71-years-old I don’t need that,” he said.

In a separate incident, a few days before the sheep was attacked, a member of the public alerted him to a man in the field, with two dogs that were chasing his cows.

He said: “By the time I got there they had gone and disappeared.

“I had a calf that was lying flat out on the field that.

“I had to call a vet out and had it x-rayed. It showed the calf had a chip of bone out of its shoulder because of the fall. That calf would have been potentially worth £800 if gone to mart. But it didn’t thrive and all it was good for as well was home use.”