An aggressive conspiracy of ravens is wreaking havoc on farmers in central Sweden, having killed more than a dozen animals in the last 3 months.
“It’s been a 20 percent loss of my production,” farmer Lennart Gunnergård told The Local.
Since February, Gunnegård has had to carry the remains of 14 calves from his cattle farm in Lerdala near Skaraborg in central Sweden which has about 75 cows and an equal number of calves.
Normally, Gunnegård loses a calf or two each year to the hungry ravens.
But this year, the area raven flock has ballooned from less than ten birds to more than 30.
“It seems there are three ravens who sort of act like the ring leaders,” he said.
On one occasion recently, Gunnegård noticed a small group of ravens swirling shortly after he had placed a yellow ear tag on a two-day old calf.
“And just after I put in the ear tag, I looked out and saw two ravens start pecking the calf’s ear tag, while two others started going for its eyes,” he said.
clipped from: www.thelocal.se