Cows kept indoors

Yes it does with the same consequences. Nothing to do with welfare or being kind to wild animals. Its the result of bad legislation.

Not sure how this discussion has left cows indoors and is now talking about foxes? Nevertheless - here's the facts:

Empirical evidence shows that fox predation accounts for only a very small proportion of lamb losses and has a negligible financial impact.

Estimates of annual UK lamb losses range from 7-15%  However, only 5% of these losses are attributed to predators and/or misadventure (e.g. going missing), with  the actual proportion of lambs lost to foxes being very difficult to determine and likely to be overestimated. 

According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the main causes of lamb loss are: abortion and stillbirth; exposure and starvation;  infectious disease and congenital defects. In other words, 95% of lamb losses are due to farm husbandry practices. Defra’s advice to farmers is very clear and focuses entirely on improving farming practices: “Many lambs could survive with better planning, good preparation, well organised lambing routines and facilities, good stockmanship, possibly increased supervision and staffing numbers around lambing time and early recognition of problem lambs.

Cheers

Bugs

PS - can we go back to cows now?

No dairy cows, "free range" or not, spend all year outside. Grass does not grow all year, and the other main problem is the state of the ground in our climate. Gateways, feeders and any other area used daily by stock soon get poached (turned into a muddy mess). Some hardy breeds (as seen on a couple of the recent This Farming Life series, do stay out all year. But not dairy cows. 

I'm not taking sides on the indoor/outdoor issue, but the building was built for the job, light and airy with good ventilation.  We never saw the winter housing for the Free Range cows.

And in case you're wondering, our cows came in full time on 17th October last year (they had been in at nights for a couple of weeks).  They will go out when there is enough grass, towards the end of April.

Please do not judge all farmers by how they are portrayed on programmes made mainly for non-farmers.

...Or to make for a "controvercial debate"

Defra - The Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Affairs?

I have a very interesting version of CPRE, but am too polite to post it on here. Not that it affects you Fish, living in Wales.

We have our own share of quangos and do good organisations, usually people who have no real connection to the locality but very vociferous in telling us how to do things.