Return of the Border raiders

THE sheep thieves knew exactly what they were doing. They drove a

cattle truck across two fields, herded 31 greyface ewes into the back,

and headed south through the Berwickshire lanes across the Border.

The loss to brothers John and David Seed, of Cuthill Farm near Duns,

was more than #2000. The gain to some farmer, possibly as far away as

the English Midlands, was good Scottish breeding stock with no questions

asked.

That raid happened within the past two weeks. This week a #700 flock

of 14 greyface-Leicester lambs was stolen from a field beside the

Newcastleton-Canonbie road and earlier this month another 34 greyfaces

were stolen from a field close to the A1 near Dunbar and nine Suffolk

cross-bred lambs were lifted from a farm near Coldingham. In May and

July sheep valued at #1500 were also stolen from farms on the

Berwickshire coast.

In the Border lands where reiving was once a way of life, sheep

rustling is making a comeback. But today, instead of hard-riding men who

knew no other existence, the culprits are skilled gangs of outsiders who

move in with vans and a shopping list and escape along the roads south

or up into the central belt.

With about one million sheep and hundreds of farms in the rolling

Border hills and the rich plain of the Merse, the potential pickings are

clearly inviting. And if this year's 10 recorded raids in the Borders

region do not seem like a crime wave they compare with only one raid in

1992 and none at all the year before that.

''It is extremely worrying,'' says Borders NFU secretary Bob Noble.

''This is definitely an increasing trend and there are also thefts which

do not appear on the police statistics because the farmer is not sure

whether the sheep have been stolen or just strayed.

''The gangs know how to handle sheep and sometimes even operate with

good dogs. These are not random thefts. They are almost certainly

carried out to order after careful preparation. And although the sheep

are taken a long way from the point of theft, we are concerned that

there is probably an element of local inside information that helps the

gangs know just what to go for.''

The police agree with the distant destination theory. Crime prevention

officer PC John Horan, who helped to set up Scotland's first Farm Watch

scheme in the Borders three years ago, says: ''The lambs probably end up

in an illegal back-street slaughter house with the carcass sold to a

butcher who closes an eye to their origin. They lack the documentation

to go to a licensed abattoir.

''For the same reason stolen ewes would be very unlikely to be sold

through an auction mart. There would be too much risk of suspicion and

it is more likely that they are sold directly or indirectly to farmers

who may find it convenient not to ask too many questions.''

There is a similar theft pattern in Dumfries and Galloway, East

Lothian and over the border in Northumberland. English and Scottish

border farmers are already co-operating through the Farm Watch scheme

alerting each other by phone to criminal activity or the presence of

suspicious strangers.

The watch scheme was set up before the surge in stock raiding to

combat a rising tide of thefts from farms of expensive equipment like

all-terrain bikes and chainsaws. It has produced dramatically successful

results in that area and now the police are hoping it will be the key

weapon in beating sheep thefts before the figures become even more

serious.

''We have increased our patrols but this is a huge area and very

difficult to cover,'' says PC John Horan. ''The most effective method of

combatting the thieves is the vigilance and security consciousness of

the farmers themselves, and of the public too. Someone driving slowly

along a country lane looking over a hedge could be a sheep thief making

a reconnaissance or just a legitimate tourist. We would much rather get

a call and find it was a false alarm than have no reaction at all.''

Norman Douglas, of Catflackburn Farm in the Yarrow Valley west of

Selkirk, runs 14,000 sheep and is Borders representative on the Scottish

NFU Livestock Committee.

''The sheep thefts are clearly well organised and on the increase

because sheep are a valuable commodity at the moment,'' he says. ''It

all seems to be part of a steady increase in rural crime. A few years

ago a farmer never dreamed of locking up his equipment; now we have to

be very security conscious. Thieves will check a place out and if

challenged say they are seeking shooting rights or looking for odd jobs

like painting a shed.

''One of the real difficulties today is the hugely reduced number of

people working on farms. There used to be so many more people to keep an

eye on things but now the workforce is often down to the farmer and his

family. That makes it easier for thieves.''

PC John Horan accepts that careful planning goes into some of the

sheep raids, but he also believes that others are opportunistic. ''An

expert thief can react very quickly if he sees a chance as he drives

along a road beside a field full of sheep,'' he says.

But over in Berwickshire, John Seed, the man who lost that #2000

vanload of Cuthill Farm ewes, has no doubts that the gang that hit his

flock had a first-class local briefing.

''They chose the only ten-day period when the ewes could be stolen

with relative ease,'' he says. ''The ewes were together on a grass park

on an adjoining farm and had been separated from their lambs only a few

days earlier. Before that they were all over the place. And they were

stolen just before they were due to be freshly marked with our big red

S. The old marks had faded and been clipped away.

''We think our security is quite good, but if determined thieves are

getting that sort of local intelligence it seems to me that you could

padlock everything in sight and it still wouldn't make much

difference.''