Neville Mattick's family has been breeding sheep in the Central West NSW for 140 years but he has never seen anything quite like this.

Feral pigs have been eating his lambs alive, with fewer than one in 100 surviving this season.

Mr Mattick said lamb survival rates had plummeted in recent years, from more than 100 per cent in 2021 (accounting for twins), to 10 per cent in 2024 and fewer than 1 per cent this year.

He said feral pigs in the area had learnt to "migrate to carnivorous behaviour".

"They have learned to look for available protein in the environment," Mr Mattick said.

"The lambs became easy prey.

"There were 18 to 20 lambs some days in the paddocks … but the numbers just dwindled away because the pigs were there overnight."

The most recent estimates, from a National Feral

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