Picture this: You toil night and day, through thick and thin, and just as you are about to reap the rewards, wham! The promising yield is reaped by persons who perhaps have never done a hard day's work.

Well that's how cattle farmer, Samuel Flemming, his son Patrick and their neighbours in Chudleigh, Manchester feel.

Tragically, the farmer sees no end to the pillaging of their property.

At daytime, the vast expanse of serene meadows on which cattle graze lazily, under sun and rain, belie its transformation to a hunting ground for rampaging thieves at night.

However, cattle farmers know this only too well.

Their painful experiences tell a heart-rending story of a struggle to keep going in the face of devastating loss, not at the whims of Mother Nature, but by the deeds of unscrupulous men.

Flemming Sr told The Gleaner that over the past three years, cattle thieves have stolen more than 20 head of mature cattle from him alone. He revealed that the value for one fully grown animal is $80,000. Multiply that by 20 and you get a $1.6-million loss for one small farmer.

Millions of dollars yanked from the grasp of the many cattle farmers in Chudleigh each year.

Flemming Sr said he had not been the target of the thieves in recent weeks but this was of little comfort as the hoodlums could strike at any time.

Just recently, a neighbouring farm lost six head of cattle in one night.

To repel the thieves, Flemming Sr has spent thousands of dollars to install floodlights to monitor his cattle. "We jus' a try a thing," he explained.

Still the Flemmings and their neighbours keep their fingers crossed as the perpetrators have clearly mastered the art of cattle theft.

"They study how to thief the cows," Flemming Sr told The Gleaner.

The Flemmings strongly believe that men from outside the cattle farming community are in cahoots with persons with an intimate knowledge of the area.

Flemming Jr laments that the nature and logistics of the industry only complicated their woes.

"The theft is difficult to contain as they (the cattle) are not fixed," he explained.

J.C. Hutchinson, junior agriculture minister, has announced a plan by the Government to encourage the implantation of trackable electronic devices in animals to fight farm theft.

The arrest of a man who was suspected to have stolen a number of goats three months ago sparked very little enthusiasm among cattle farmers. The younger Flemming says the farmers have heard nothing about the case since.

"It is time the Government do something to help us," he bemoaned.

gary.spaulding@gleanerjm.com