Police are investigating the suspected theft of a flock of sheep from a farm in the NSW Central West, just days after four Middle Eastern men were charged with killing and stealing livestock in the region.
The NSW Police Rural Crime Prevention Team attached to Orana Mid-Western Police District began an investigation after receiving a report that 120 Merino ewes had gone missing from the property in Leadville, about 100km east of Dubbo.
Police said the sheep were of mixed age and were in full wool at the time of their disappearance, which took place between April 2025 and September this year.
“They are earmarked with a capital M in the centre of the ear. Depending on their age, some sheep may also have a age-mark notch cut from the top of the opposite ear, ranging from no age mark through to three notches,” police said, and released images of some of the sheep.
The investigation comes after four men were arrested in western Sydney and charged over the alleged deaths of two cross-bred ewes and theft of three cross-bred lambs from a property at Mullion Creek, near Orange.
The April murder of a Victorian farmer who had recently reported sheep thefts also sparked fears that a Middle Eastern “Merino theft mafia” was operating in state.
In April 2025 Victoria Police released images of three Middle Eastern men who stole Merino sheep from a farm in Strathlea, and local farmer Kevin Butler said that incident and another in April this year in Kurting showed that there was a “theft epidemic”.
He said a farmer at Brenanah had seen two Middle Eastern men in a ute with no registration scoping out properties, while another local reported that about 100 unshorn lambs were allegedly stolen from a sheering shed on a farm at Clunes, near Ballarat.
Mr Butler said a “highly credible and respected fellow farmer” had told him he lost 200 to 300 Merino sheep to livestock gangs every year, and that criminals would take 20 to 40 at a time after lifting gates off hinges or pushing fences over.
The farmer said drones are used to locate the sheep, which are immediately slaughtered, sometimes in a truck, and that Merinos are chosen because they can be easily chased down in open paddocks until they collapse from exhaustion.
Queensland farmers have also been targeted, with 5,500 sheep allegedly stolen from a property near Blackall earlier this year.
Header image: The missing sheep (NSW Police).
