Mutilated cow investigated. Coyotes!

Mutilated cow investigated
The StarPhoenixAugust 21, 2009
RCMP continue to investigate the discovery of a mutilated cow north of Saskatoon.

On Wednesday, Neil Bartsch found the dead animal on a patch of bloody grass in a pasture off 71st Street between Idylwyld Drive and Highway 16.

The cow's genitals and udder are missing, the flesh part of its head is stripped to the bone and the tongue is gone. It's likely the two-year-old cow was dead for up to 36 hours before Bartsch found it in the pasture that he has rented for nearly 20 years.

Neil and Mary Bartsch believe the cow had been stabbed and that parts of the animal had been deliberately cut out, but a veterinarian and professor at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan is not convinced.

"That's very typical of scavenging," said Dr. John Campbell, who examined the carcass in the pasture.

"Magpies and coyotes will go for those areas (the rear, abdomen and internal organs) very typically. It's soft tissue."

He concedes that it's not as common for scavengers to chew at the tongue and head area, but he wonders if dogs, in addition to coyotes, might have gotten to the carcass.

A necropsy will not be performed on the cow.

"It was fairly decomposed. You couldn't really make a whole lot of conclusions about why she died," said Campbell.

The Bartschs, whose farm yard is closer to Warman, still think something suspicious happened.

"This was not an animal (that inflicted the wounds)," says Mary.

Bartsch's other cattle in the pasture, six cows and their calves as well as a bull, remain healthy and unharmed.

Source

Unusual Animal Deaths from Half Cats to Mutilated Cows


HOME PAGE