Farmers targeted by quadnappers

RUSTLING has taken on a new look - thieves who once took sheep now steal the quad bikes farmers increasingly use to look after their flocks.

Gangs of quadnappers steal the machines to order, according to the agricultural insurers General Accident. The all-terrain vehicles are becoming essential for many farmers, for everything from carrying spreading equipment to inspecting fences and reaching land inaccessible to other vehicles, besides checking stock.

But their popularity has made them a target, and what General Accident calls a "staggering" one in four vehicles are stolen.

In the past five years there has been a 30-per-cent increase in theft of the bikes, worth up to pounds 6,000 each.

"Thieves are increasingly turning to farms, where thousands of pounds worth of equipment frequently lie vulnerable," said General Accident's agriculture manager, John Kaye. "Quad bikes are particularly soft targets because of the ease with which they can be loaded on to a van or trailer and then rapidly sold on.

"Nevertheless, an increasing number of thefts occur as a result of 'casualness' on the part of their owners - whether it's leaving an expensive quad bike unattended at the edge of a field near a busy road or failing to put anything more than a flimsy barn door between a thief and thousands of pounds worth of equipment."

There were few lengths to which thieves would not go, Mr Kaye said.

"In the past year or so we've seen claims for a pounds 6,000 quad bike which was chained and padlocked in a custom-made steel case concreted into the floor of a locked outbuilding being stolen with the aid of an acetylene blow torch, as well as thieves removing a pounds 2,000 vehicle chained and padlocked inside a barn before pushing it across three fields in broad daylight."