A BRATTON Clovelly couple spoke of their shock and anger this week after losing 150 of their sheep who were believed to have suffocated as they tried to escape from dogs.

The ewes, over a third of Roger and Judith Heywood's breeding flock, were found dead in a gateway at Little Burrow Farm, Bratton Clovelly, last Friday morning.

It is thought the sheep were chased in a field and forced against a gate where they jumped on top of each other and suffocated trying to escape.

Mrs Heywood said that over the past month she had lost a few animals from what she believed was dogs getting into the field and worrying the sheep but she never could have imagined this happening.

'It is a real shock and absolutely horrific — nobody has ever seen anything like it before,' she said.

'My husband checked the sheep the evening before so it must have happened some time in the night but we did not hear anything. A neighbour found the sheep and phoned us.'

Mrs Heywood said the previous night the neighbour had heard a dog bark but when he went out into the field there was nothing there.

'The dog must have been disturbed,' she said. 'The strange thing is nobody has seen any animals chasing anything.

'We brought some rams back to the paddock the next morning but we could not have foreseen something on this scale happening.

'This is not a large farm and the fields are no more than a quarter of a mile from the house but nobody heard a thing.'

Mrs Heywood said she and her husband had spent 32 years building up the flock.

'We have a closed flock and do not buy in any sheep,' she added. 'We breed all our own and we have just lost 150. How do we replace these?

'It is difficult to say what will happen now with a large amount of the flock gone.'

The couple have 420 ewes and the ones that died were in a field of 220.

'I am very angry about this,' said Mrs Heywood. 'A dog is a potential killing machine and given certain circumstances and excitement this can happen.

'These animals have not been killed by a dog but by being chased and being suffocated by piling on top of each other when they were terrified.

'People should look after their animals and know where they are.

'All we can do now is keep an eye on our remaining sheep and just hope we can find whatever has done this.'

PC Nigel Fidock said that at the moment there were no clues as to what dogs were responsible for the tragedy.

'It is very unusual for this number of sheep to die,' he said. 'There have been several sheep-worrying incidents in the area but usually the dog has a bite at a few sheep, has its fill and leaves the sheep alone.

'The animals in this case are remarkably untouched.

'I would have thought more than one dog was responsible for this, but unfortunately at the moment we have no idea what dogs we are looking for.

'If anybody knows anything we would ask them to get in touch with the police.'