A farmer who had 18 cattle stolen from his farm in west Cork has said he is afraid of being targeted again.
Gardaí are investigating the theft of the animals from a farm near Skibbereen in Co Cork overnight between Sunday and yesterday.
A total of 12 Friesian heifers and six Friesian bulls were reported stolen from a farm yard in the Lakelands area of Skibbereen.
The animals were between 12 months and 14 months old.
Dairy farmer Brian Lawlor milks around 200 cows and said he is fearful of the thieves returning.
"For a start we're afraid that they'll come back again, because we don't know who's done this. There's €30,000 worth of stock gone. What business could lose that money in the morning," he said.
"We've all heard stories of cattle going missing but you'd never think it would come to your own door."
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Lawlor said that at first he thought the cattle had broken out before realising they had been taken.
"They clever thing that they did was take all the cattle from one pen and when they were finished stealing our cattle, they moved other cattle to fill that pen to make it look less obvious. We didn't realise straight away that we had cattle missing until we went counting," he said.
The stolen cattle were the farm's breeding stock, Mr Lawlor said, and their DNA was on file for the future.
"We didn't know it when we did it, but of course they will be traceable," he said.
Gardaí are appealing for anyone with information or those with camera footage and were travelling between the R637 and R593 roads overnight between Sunday and yesterday to contact Skibbereen Garda Station on 028-23088.
President of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association Denis Drennan said given the animals are only a year old, they are nowhere near fit for slaughter.
"If somebody came to me this morning and offered me those animals for free, I wouldn't be able to take them and accept them into my herd because the Department of Agriculture have a very efficient and foolproof animal identification and movement system called the AIMS system," he said.
Speaking on the same programme, he said there was a small network of animals being stolen for slaughter, but "they would be much older animals, that would be bigger animals, ready to go into (the) food chain".
"This is a very unusual occurrence".
He explained that for such theft to take place, there is a lot of "illegality" involved, and it needs to be a "slick" operation.
For rustling to take place, somebody is needed to load and transport the animals, an illegal abattoir to slaughter the animals, the animals would then have to be hung, like all beef, for three to four weeks before it is fit for human consumption, he said.
