[plumseverywhere]

Is this a sign of a deficiency or something I'm not to worry to much about? Murphy loves a nice lump of sheep poo to start the day and any mouldy mice Snowball has left lying around he tries to chomp on too but I do get them off of him 
Do I need to look at his food/minerals or anything please?

[Mammyshaz]

No, he is just being a scavenging dog I'm afraid.

 Try to teach him the command 'leave it!'  starting by teaching with a little dog treat in front of him, command him to leave it, then praise him and give him a bigger, nicer treat for leaving a little treat. Over several weeks he should be very keen to leave on command if he is rewarded well. then start giving the command to other items such a s toys. It will develop quickly as long as he always gets a nice reward for leaving what to him looks nice. You should quickly be able to establish this to anything including sheep poo or   dead mice 

[SallyintNorth]

Frankly, poo out of your own sheep is probably a lot more nutritious to a dog than a lot of commercial dog feeds and biscuits.

Seriously, dogs need plant fibre and can't process cellulose, so eating herbivore poo is nature's way.  A lot of commercial dog feeds contain waste from chicken sheds to meet just this need...

[doganjo]

I wouldn't worry about teh sheep poo as they are wormed regularly and fed well, but I would certainly use the leave it command for anything dead.  Freckles chomped on something yesterday but I was too far away from her to enforce any commands so I walked on and she eventually followed me - but boy what a stink she made all evening!  And although they were all wormed only 3 weeks ago I think I'll keep an eye on her poos for a wee while till I can worm them again.

[Sylvia]

The only thing to do if you really hate it is to look the other way!

[Fleecewife]

Yes, sheep droppings - dogs love 'em     When we lived on the outskirts of a town we had a neighbour's dog which would raid our cat litter tray - he just loved cat poo rolled in cat litter     I think he was simply deranged because all he was going to pick up potentially was parasites - lucky for him we wormed our cats regularly.
As well as a nicely shaped sheep dropping, our dogs love their foot clippings too     I'm sure that as Sally says the dogs are getting nutrition and fibre from the sheep droppings, although ours eat grass and couch roots too occasionally.  Cooked vegetables ie leftovers, added in to their dinner might help, if you don't like the post-poo-eating-session dog breath 
 
Dogs eating dead things is always a worry in case they have died of poison which is still active in the corpse and could poison the dog.  Ours only like to chew on really ancient dead vermin which have turned into frisbees.  Three day old dead crows, deer etc though are wonderful to roll in 

[Womble]

Dog novice here: Why do they roll in smelly stuff then? 

[jaykay]

Nah, he's just being a dog

Well in theory they roll in the smelly stuff to disguise their scent so they can creep up on prey animals and eat them.

In practice, I just think some dogs just love muck 

[Fleecewife]

....and they have a particularly urgent need to roll in something REALLY smelly just after a bath, to get rid of that horrible shampoo smell 

[jaykay]

Absolutely  The disgrace of walking round smelling like a girlie human 

[Rosemary]

Ours like horse poo, sheep poo and chicken poo; Tess likes horse and Meg likes chicken  ; don't do dead things so much but our cats have never left much in the way of corpses around.

It's just the joy of dog ownership - one of the plus sides is is Snowball's ever sick, Murphy will probably clean up 

[plumseverywhere]

   brilliant - thanks everyone    Just reassuring to know its all normal!

- one of the plus sides is is Snowball's ever sick, Murphy will probably clean up 

  haha! oh that makes me feel a bit queasy now lol!!

[Bionic]

  brilliant - thanks everyone    Just reassuring to know its all normal!

- one of the plus sides is is Snowball's ever sick, Murphy will probably clean up 

  haha! oh that makes me feel a bit queasy now lol!!

My dog particularly likes the cat sick, probably because there are lods of pieces in it an not just mush. Urgh, why do we have them? 

[plumseverywhere]

Oh I remember the GSD I grew up with always eating cat sick now - ooh its all flooding back (the memory that is!!)

Murphy has just killed a mouse. He and Snowball (the cat) rounded it up between them and she left him with it. Looks like he'll be great with ratting in the barn!! won't let him eat already dead ones though because of possible poisoning etc.

[SallyintNorth]

By all means take dead things off them / clear them up if you see them - but don't be overanxious if you think they may have eaten one; the amount of (legal) poison it takes to kill a rat won't have much effect on a dog.