Motorists travelling on the old Dublin Galway road in the Ballinasloe/Ballydangan area early last Saturday morning are being asked for their help regarding stolen cattle.
Seven in-calf Friesian heifers were stolen from farmland in the area sometime between 2pm on last Friday afternoon and half past seven the following morning,
Dairy farmer Enda Doran says the land is a bit off the beaten track and it's likely the thieves waited until daylight sometime on Friday morning to take the animals.
He says the tracks in the field show a jeep and trailer would have bene used but other than that there are no leads so far.
Enda says it's very hard to understand what market there is for these high-quality heifers, but he believes they may have been 'stolen to order'.
''Someone said to me that they were brought to order but you know for dairy stock, dairy farmers generally don't be buying stock bar if there was problems with fertility or some disease on the farm so very surprised because they're limited where they can go you know if you have beef cattle you'd say it's easy to switch tags like these are in calf. These are cattle for breeding, they are in no way fit to kill, they're 3-4 months in calf and it's actually sickening to be honest with you.''
