White Swan Free Range Eggs' Joel Owins woke in the middle of the night on Friday to find a car "revving its head off" on his property's driveway.

"I didn't think anything of it, I thought maybe they had gotten stuck in the grass or something like that initially, because I was kind of half-asleep," he said.

When he went to inspect the site the next morning, Mr Owins found a ute's broken-off side rail near his culvert drain and track marks coming out of the nearby ditch.

White Swan operate a farm gate free range egg business, and Mr Owin said it wasn't the first time someone had attempted to tamper with the shop in the middle of the night.

Luckily no money was stolen, or property damaged beyond the would-be thief's ute.

"We have been running the farm gate shop here for quite a number of years and have had a lot of suspicious cars over that time," he said.

"We have had a few incidents over the years where stuff has been taken, so we make sure that we empty the farm gate so that there is nothing there. People still pull up in the middle of the night and check it out.

"What has happened is that we have had locks on money boxes, which are empty, but they will still pry them open and damage them."

Following the incident, Mr Owins made a good-humoured social media post, and has since received messages of support from the Ballarat community and customers.

In July, the University of New England commissioned the Australian Farm Crime Survey, looking to get a snapshot of farm crimes across the country.

In February, a flock of sheep worth nearly $140,000 was stolen from a farm in Victoria's northwest.

Last year, police said thieves stealing from farms around the Ballarat region had been shoving sheep into horse floats, siphoning from farm machinery and even bringing their own sheepdogs.

"The really concerning part is that only 50 per cent of crimes on the land are actually reported," Leading Senior Constable Sam McCaskill told The Courier.

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"There can be huge spans of time when the crime may have occurred.

"... People may not be sure of exactly what has gone missing, how many sheep, or how long ago."

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