Strange Cattle Deaths

[Downtown Pete]

With some people posting on steerplanets problems they are having with cattle I was wondering what was the strangest way you have ever lost an animal.  To start off, I had one cow in a pasture of 120 head, a thunderstorm rolls through with a ton of lightning.  Guess who's cow got struck.  Should have bought a powerball ticket that day.  Had a horse break a front leg stepping over a little tree branch. Had to be put down.  Had a border collie of my dads get impalled by the grapple fork on the tractor. Somehow he lived, went about all the way through him.  Anyway, sure others have had the luxury of instances like these when dealing with livestock.  Just my opinion, horses are way worse than cows!!! They can find a piece of barbed wire anywhere...

 

[cowcrazy]

Pete-
I also had a cow get struck by lightning.  She was due to calf in two days when it happened. It never fails, she was the best cow in terms of breeding and offspring produced. Also had a horse break a leg in the barn when the floor was really wet and slippery.  I guess it goes with the territory!

 

[aj]

I once found a skeleton of a cow hanging in a 4 wire fence. She apparently tried to jump it and assumed room temperature tangled in this man made contraption of death.

 

[farmboy]

Don't leave your head gates open folks.

 

[orwell]

Last year we had a really steer calf that was eating through a head gate and a bail rolled on top of his head, and he died right there. We are a lot more careful with placing the bail now.

 

[wrc]

I worked in the show barn of an angus ranch in Nebraska for 2 years when I graduated high school.  My parents came up to visit me and I was telling my dad about the cattle, I told him about one particular bull that the ranch had leased, he was one of the most popularAI bulls at that time.  My dad went out to see him and came back to tell us that the bull had been hit by lightning by the windmill in that pasture.  
  Same ranch, we were leaving to go to Louisville early one morning when we discovered that our best heifer had reached thru the pipe fence at the end of her run to get some hay that fell outside at feeding the night before.  It had come a rain that night and she slipped in the mud and broke her neck.  I saw a man that I figured had never shed a tear in his life cry that morning.  That heifer was the real deal and had a good chance to win ROV show heifer of the year.
 When I was a kid we had 2 yearling colts killed by a mt. lion.  They were in a pen, the lion killed 1 and the other 1 was killed by running into the side of the pen trying to get away from the lion.  They both had claw marks on their backs.

 

[SKF]

We had a heifer snap her neck after getting it stuck in a wooden gate that led to the cow pens. This was just after her eye healed up from getting a chain from the panels stuck in her eye. Took like a month for that to heal and then she dies with her head stuck in a gate. She was one of those calves that was always into something determined to die. Then we had a steer calf we bought did not even have it 24 hrs and we to put him down. He tried to jump out of his pen and broke his leg in half it was a gruesome break.

 

[shortdawg]

Some just have no will to live ????

 

[bjam4]

had one get killed by a power line that fell in the pasture we let out in best steer we had that year their were other calves in pasture also at the time  also had one die on the hoof trimming table and another die from docking its tail

 

[xxcc]

wanta see some weird stuff.  in 2004, i lost a calf the weirdest way you could imagine.  it was found dead on pasture, 15 miles NE of Browning, MT on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.  totally looked like one of those 'UFO; mutilations to me.  the indians i was pasturing with wouldn't go near the calf once they saw it.

look up this book:

Mystery Stalks the Prairie

I grew up right in the heart of this country.

 

[Titangurl]

How'd it die on the foot reining table?

 

[aj]

I know back in the 70's there were cows around here deceased and mutilated. It made the papers.It was thought to be some kind of cult deal. I can't remember the details. But the carcasses were weirdly mutilated.

 

[kfacres]

had a pile of tin in the pasture over nite once, we were working on redoing a small shed...  had a calf cut her leg off on that pile...  dardest thing... 

Had a sheep get pinned between the tractor tire, and a tree while feeding hay once...

also had a sheep get pinned between the truck and trailor after dark while we were turning around in pasture to load out of the barn.. 

maybe the weirdest one... had a cow die from lead poisioning the other day...



well, kinda, ended up having to shoot her- was haing a dead, rotten calf tail first... and we finally got a rear leg turned, and ripped it off, then finally got the other leg around, and ripped it off... couldn't do anything else...  Never really saved a cow that long gone anyways with that much toxins built up....  Now wish we'd a just shot her right off the bat, and not wasted a whole day on it. 

 

[oakview]

One of my favorite cows evidently tried to stand in a wooden feed bunk, broke one of the boards, got her head stuck underneath it, rolled over trying to get out, and suffocated.  Since this is National Western time, it reminds me of the time many years ago we showed out there and the cattle all needed to be dipped.  I mean really dipped under treated water I believe for scabies.  If I remember correctly, the hydraulics malfunctioned when dipping a Polled Hereford bull, and he drowned.  I don't remember all the details, but it seems as though the bull was owned by Penn State or Michigan State.  Maybe some of the rest of you that were in Denver when that happened can fill in some of the details. 

I got a call from a good friend two nights ago.  He said he needed to buy another bull, which was good.  Then he told me the reason he needed another bull was because the one he bought from me two years ago had died, he thought from a twisted gut, which was bad.  We bought a good bull, Hi View Royal Cameo, in the late 60's that died from the same thing.  We never have figured out what caused it, my friend said his bull was running and playing the night before they found him appearing to be very uncomfortable.  My rule of thumb with cattle misfortune is that it only happens to the good ones.

 

[Ohioteerchick]

While we were at our county fair, my mom went home to check the cows and when she got back to where they all were she noticed one of them was missing so she drove around looking for her, and found her laying in the pasture dead. There was no signs of a struggle dieing, she was a young cow, about 5 months pregnant, no signs of early labor, wasn't shot, nothing. It just looked like she fell over dead. Never found out why.

 

[STX108]

Lost a calf recently...shocked by bare wire touching pipe pens...dunno if it was electrocuted or went in to cardiac arrest from the shock...cattle panel burned into its forehead and muzzle as if it was branded...

 

[Downtown Pete]

My dad went to brand a yearling colt with an electric iron and somehow wound up electricuting the colt and killed it.  Vet was standing right there when it happened.  They were going to cut him after branding.  Vet thought only thing he could think of was faulty branding iron.  Needless to say, my dad is pretty paraniod now and unpluggs the iron before he sticks it on the animal now.  Told a guy about it one time and he said he knew of a guy that had killed two yearlings from the same thing one day when they were working them.  Kind of makes a guy like his propane branding stove a little more...

 

[simtal]

had a cow fall alseep next to a washout in the pasture, apparently she rolled over in the wash out and was found dead with all four feet in the air

 

[oakbar]

I bought a donor cow at the Schrag's sale last year--SS Dream Girl 3110.  She had a Deadwood calf in Octobler so we were planning to flush her last  April.  I fed the cows on Sunday evening when we came home from the(March) Ft. Dodge show and she was right there eating with the rest of them.  At  7:00 the next morning, when I did my chores, she was laying on her side dead and blown up like a cow shaped LP tank.  Apparently, she rolled back into the depression in of the middle of a frozen round bale after the cows had eaten the loose hay out of the middle.  She apparently couldn't get rolled back up on her belly again.  Damn, sure hated to lose that good cow!!

My father used to put up hay in stacks and would leave them scattered around the field closest to our yard for winter feeding.  He would then move the electric fence out and put a square bale feeder around them one at a time.  One year(much like this one) we had a lot of ice and wet snow that built up on top of the stacks.  The cows would eat out all four sides of the stack making them look like mushrooms in  the middle of the feeder.  One day one of these "mushrooms" of ice must have tipped over very suddenly because we found four black cows  laying side by side with broken necks--- their heads still in the feeder!!

 

[Simmgirl03]

Numerous years ago, we killed a new two year old bull with an electric iron.  The electricity didn't kill him, but for some reason he was unable to move and we had to be cut the squeeze chute and use the tractor to get him out.  At first we had no idea what had happened, and then soon found that the extension cord was faulty.  We thought that maybe the shock had just done nerve damage but we couldn't let him suffer so we decided to just butcher him.  When we got the hide off it was very clear to see that he had shattered his own back.  Very freaky deal, needless to say that was the most expensive hamburger we ever ate, and we now have a "Hot pen" that checks cords and outlets for stray electrical currents.