Animals’ Angels visit the saleyard for the first time. There are 12.700 sheep and lambs for sale.
The yard has a system in place which clears all people from the area immediately after sale. This makes it easier to move the animals and causes them less stress. However, the numbers of sheep in the sale pens makes it very hard to inspect each sheep for their fitness to be transported to the yard and sold. We identify one sheep who cannot bear weight on his left foreleg. He is removed for euthanasia.
The density of sheep in pens is the biggest issue we observed today; given there is a row of empty pens, there was no need to force sheep into an area too small to take so many. When too many sheep are forced into a large area it causes surging and this is a welfare problem.
We also observe a number of sheep who have long claws. While it is not a legal requirement that the claws are cut, it is considered ‘best practice’ that they are. Trimming claws is important for the welfare of the sheep because if the claws grow too long they can impede movement of the animal and that becomes a welfare problem. We will address these issues in our report.
