A PREGNANT sheep suffered appalling fatal injuries as she was savaged in Bovey Tracey.

Distressed keeper Robbie Donovan said she’s never seen such distressing injuries to an animal.

Police have logged the incident – in a field off the Moretonhampstead road towards Bovey Tracey Hospital – as a crime.

Robbie said the three-year-old victim was in lamb when she was attacked overnight on Wednesday of last week.

‘Half of her had been eaten with the throat ripped out to the waist. It was a massive wound – the most savage I’ve seen. It was traumatic,’ she said this week.

It’s about the fifth fatality she has suffered in flocks she has kept for the last ten years.

‘It’s a little bit sinister because the wound was so long and straight that it could have been caused by a knife,’ she suggested.

She laughed off any possibility that the legendary ‘Beast of Dartmoor’ may have been responsible.

But she was puzzled by the identity of the killer as the field – in which she keeps nine sheep – is remote and well away from local dog-walking routes.

Police have confirmed the incident has been recorded as a crime.

Anyone with information about the attack should contact police on 101 and quote crime reference CR/03503/17.

Robbie said she planned to pin up images of the slaughter locally in the hope someone may have information which may help solve the mystery killing.

She felt the poor sheep’s injuries were unlikely to have been caused by a fox.

She did not rule out the chances of it being a big dog.