Farmers Building up Resistance

Instead of quarantine
Even Virtually Irreplaceable Rare Breeds Are Culled

Anne Young does not use a collie to control her flock of 200 rare merino sheep. When she whistles, they follow her. She does not have children and treats them as her family.‘I see them 18 hours every day,’ she said.
Miss Young, 49, called for help to defend her sheep from the cull whenever it begins. She said: ‘I will not allow the slaughterers on my land. I have a gun, but the police tell me that if I think of using it I would be arrested and the cull would continue without me. I intend being with them if they have to die, since I have been at nearly every one of their births.’
Miss Young built up her main flock of Lomond merinos from a research flock in the 1980s and they were accepted as a new breed two years ago. They are virtually irreplaceable.