INDIANAPOLIS – Someone drove off with a truck and trailer containing sheep belonging to a farmer attending the recent Midwest Elite Sheep and Goat Sale in Indianapolis.

Several hours later, the man – with help from a social media post – found his 2025 Ford F-250 and trailer containing his four sheep, all alive and well.

Neal Ehler said he was more relieved to find the sheep healthy since they’re part of his breeding stock and costly to replace given the quality of their genes and sex.

“I guess you could say relieved. Very happy,” is how Ehler described his reaction to finding the stolen truck and trailer containing his female sheep.

He said there was no damage to the truck, but whoever stole it left the cab a mess.

“They had kind of trashed the inside, threw some stuff around. Other than that, it was fine,” he said.

Ehler and his fiancée, Maddie Schroeder, made the eight-hour trip from their home in Iowa to the Indiana State Fairgrounds for the two-day sale that began March 27.

He purchased one of the sheep in his trailer during the sale and picked up the three other sheep he allowed 4-H and FFA members to show during the event.

After the final day of the sale, he returned to his room at a Holiday Inn Express about 15 minutes from the fairgrounds and parked his truck and trailer across the street in the parking lot of another business.

The next morning, Ehler said he walked out of his hotel room to get ready for the drive home when he discovered his truck and the trailer attached to it were gone. He called several towing companies thinking one of them had given the hook to the truck and trailer since they were parked outside another business.

But, Ehler said none of the companies had towed the truck and trailer, so he called the police and filed a report. He also posted details about the theft on his Facebook page, hoping to generate leads on the location of his property.

In addition, Ehler said he notified Ford Motor Co., which was able to track the vehicle to an area just south of Indianapolis where he found it parked on a side street.

A friend who raises livestock and went to the sale messaged him on Facebook a short time later about a trailer closely resembling his being in the parking lot of a hotel near the Indianapolis International Airport.

He made the 30-minute trip from where he was staying to find it was, indeed, his trailer with the animals still inside.

Ehler said the truck had flat tire sometime after the theft because it had a spare tire on it when found.

He later drove back to his 40-acre farm where he keeps about 60 head of sheep.

“We got them home and everybody seems to be doing good,” he said.

Ehler said he breeds his sheep by purchasing semen from males with the genetics he’s looking for and having a technician inject the fluid to impregnate the animals. He sells the animals to other breeders and members of 4-H and FFA looking for sheep to show in various competitions.

Ehler said he helped his father raise sheep as a child and bought the farm less than a year ago.