The Big Wobble: RCMP continue to investigate discovery of cow found mutilated on Saskatoon farm

These injury's are surprisingly similar to other cow mutilations posted on The Big Wobble

A veterinarian is examining the remains of a mutilated cow after a local farmer discovered one of his cows brutally murdered in a pasture north of Saskatoon.
Photograph by: Mary Bartsch, Supplied to Canwest News Service

SASKATOON — 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, who's farm yard is closer to Warman, still think something suspicious happened.

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

"You hear about this from time to time. . . . We're kind of in shock. We're not sure quite what to do now."

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

Source

From The Big Wobble, 23 March 2009

Unusual Animal Deaths from Half Cats to Mutilated Cows

by Linda Moulton Howe

Above: 28-year-old cow discovered by Weston, Colorado, rancher Mike Duran on March 8, 2009,
with her udder removed in a circle, vaginal tissue excised and left front leg likely broken
as if cow dropped to ground from some height. Image © 2009 by Tom Murphy, Trinidad Times Independent. Below: 1-week-old male calf discovered by Hoehne, Colorado, rancher Tom Miller
on March 17, 2009, with both ears removed as if exposed to heat, all its internal organs
removed and hips broken as if dropped to ground from some height. Image
© 2009 by Chuck Zukowski, MUFON Field Investigator.

Over the years, recurring cycles of cat mutilations have been reported in England, Canada and many states in America. Texas has had repeated cat mutilations in Corpus Cristi, San Antonio, Austin, and Plano, Texas, an affluent suburb north of Dallas. In 1991, 1993 and the late 1990s, Texas police received dozens of reports about cats found cut in half, usually with the front half near the owners' yards or sidewalks. Plano Police Detective Mike Box also had missing reports on more than 80 domestic house cats that wore collars and I. D. tags, but were never found. Detective Box investigated satanic cult activities, but could not find any evidence that connected them to the mutilated and missing cats and other animals such as dogs.

Half-cat photographed by Plano, Texas Police Officer
for Incident Report No. 91-44994, August 31, 1991.

3-year-old Appaloosa horse named Lady photographed about three weeks
after she was discovered on September 9, 1967, stripped of flesh from the neck up
and all her chest organs bloodlessly and surgically removed.
Photograph © 1967 by Don Anderson.

Mutilated steer, October 1979, C. E. Potts Ranch, Walsenberg, Colorado, during filming
of TV documentary, A Strange Harvest, produced by Linda Moulton Howe, Director of Special
Projects, KMGH-TV Denver; Richard Lerner, Cameraman. Photograph © 1979 by David Perkins.

Mike Duran's mutilated cow discovered March 8, 2009, on creek bed has tongue
and eyes intact, but udder removed in near circle and tissue excised from vaginal opening.
Front, left leg appeared to be broken, suggesting cow was dropped from above
onto creek bank. March 8, 2009, image © by Tom Murphy, Trinidad Times Independent.

Entire udder of 28-year-old cow who had 3-month-old calf was excised in circular cut
only hide deep. March 8, 2009, image © by Tom Murphy, Trinidad Times Independent.

Rancher Mike Duran pointing with stick to the excised vaginal tissue on his 28-year-old
cow discovered on March 8, 2009, and photographed by Tom Murphy, Trinidad Times Independent.

I saw one other mutilation two or three years after my first 1995 mutilation where one of my neighbors down the road was taking care of some cows for another neighbor who was in California. And he come up and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this cow and she’s kind of weird. You’ve had one mutilated so why don’t you come with me and take a look?’

When we got there, it was the same as my first mutilation. She was on her back and with her udder taken out and the exterior of the vaginal opening was also taken out. But what was weird about this cow, we saw also that the jawbone flesh was taken, as you have mentioned happens in so many mutilations you've investigated.

Polaroid photograph taken in 1976 at the Budin Ranch
in Sterling, Colorado, by former Logan County Sheriff Tex Graves
at one of more than a hundred animal mutilations he investigated in the
1970s. Many animals were so freshly dead that the bodies were warm to touch
at the scene. The jaw bone cleaned of flesh, tongue removed, “cookie cutter” circular
removal of flesh around the eye and removal of eyeball was a common pattern
of bloodless tissue removal from mutilated animals in the 1970s to 1990s.

Being dropped from above on to the ground was first reported by sheriffs who worked with veterinarians or medical people on necropsies of the strangely dead animals. When multiple broken bones were found, the conclusion was: the animal had to have been dropped from a considerable height to where it was found dead and mutilated.

One of the definitive cases on this was one I investigated in Montana a couple of years ago. The sheriff called me to say they had a bounce mark about three feet from where a large cow was found dead and mutilated. Biophysicist W. C. Levengood was able to work with soil and pasture grass I collected at the site and compare to laboratory impact stress on soils. He confirmed the soil in the crater next to the mutilated cow had been impacted by a weight from above equivalent to the weight of the full grown cow. [ See Archived Earthfiles November 24, 2006: Scientific Data Supports Theory That Mutilated Montana Cow
Dropped from Sky and Bounced. ]