'Devastating': Police investigate theft of livestock worth $66,000 from farm

Livestock worth more than $66,000 were stolen from a south-west sheep farm, prompting a call out from police for help.

Heywood farmer Shane Norris said it took a while for him to realise about 270 lambs and ewes had been taken from his Bessiebelle outpadock after initially dismissing the clues.

Mr Norris said about a month ago when he had boxed two of the mobs together he noticed the numbers seemed a bit low.

"I just thought I was overthinking it," he said.

A week later when he went to mark the lambs he realised they were "substantially down" in numbers.

"I would typically mark 500 plus lambs off that property," he said. But there was only about 240 lambs.

After drenching and counting the ewes, he discovered he was missing 70.

"It sort of come as a little bit of a shock," he said.

What drove home the fact they were gone was that his wife's pet sheep - that was also out on the property - had stopped coming up to be hand-fed barley every day.

"I thought that's really weird that she's not here," he said.

"Everything started to click together."

Mr Norris said a few weeks before he had noticed gates on the property had been left open, but at the time he just assumed he had forgotten to close them.

Neighbouring farm also hit by thieves

Then on Tuesday, Mr Norris found out his neighbour across the road had 50 sheep stolen.

He said it was confirmation that he wasn't just dreaming it up and they hadn't just magically got out and wandered off.

For three days, he searched the bluegum plantation that neighbours two sides of his property on his quad bike.

And then another day he searched the area with his drone, but there was no evidence sheep had got into the plantation.

"No footprints, no holes in fences and sheep don't typically go in that larger number," Mr Norris said.

"It's usually two or three or four.

"They'll eat and then they'll come back."

He estimated he had lost about $66,000 worth of livestock.

"It's crazily devastating. Realistically, they're not recoverable," he said.

Mr Norris said he imagined the tags would have already been replaced and the livestock perhaps sold to an abattoir.

Like most farmers across the south-west, he had been impacted by the drought and had to buy in feed.

"Everyone's struggling. Our whole community of farmers are struggling with feed and the drought. And then there's the cost of running farms," Mr Norris said.

"It's also devastating because I spent probably about $12,000 worth of feed to feed those and half of that feed I've put into them has now just disappeared.

"It's crazy. It's one of those things you read about but you don't expect to happen to yourself."

Detective senior constable Richard Hughes, Warrnambool Criminal Investigation Unit, said police were investigating the theft of 270 livestock from Portland Road, Bessibelle.

He said they were taken sometime after 6am May 20, 2025. He said a neighbour had also reported his sheep were stolen in late May.

Most of the sheep and ewes are first cross with about 12 being White Suffolk, Mr Hughes said.