Mysterious Disappearance of Cattle

 2030 and no more cows?

Cattle ranchers have been reporting mutilation on their high end bulls in Grant and Harney county oregon over the last 4 years at least. It seems sinister, I also wondered about lab grown beef and how it is actually "grown" and where the original beef cells come from. Here at least, the ranchers with the prominent last names/ ranches seems to be the target. Strange times indeed. Thanks for having the conversation.

I met a young lady from Montana who's family raised about 500 cows and 1000 sheep. They were driving the sheep to government grazing land they had a permit to use. They woke up one morning on the drive and found over 80 ewes ripped to pieces. All signs pointed to grizzly bears. The reason they used aluminum to sabotage the corn field was forage harvesters have a medal detector that shuts the head off so no metal can go through the chopper. Aluminum won't trip the metal detector. Someone who did that knew what they were doing. Hardware disease is a terrible way for a cow to die and the only way to treat her is to drop a magnet into her stomach which again won't work on aluminum. Not much will be done with Eco and animal rights terrorists as they are also fund raising for the ruling class.

Back in 4-H I was raising a steer in the 70's. We went out to a ranch that had charolais, white cattle, and I bought a bull calf from the foreman for $350. Castrated it, and did the usual care. A guy passed our house and noticed the steer, turned around and came into the yard. My dad met him and he asked about the steer. My dad told him where I got it and that it was castrated, being raised for 4-H. The man said, that is my ranch, and I didn't sell him that calf. That calf, when a grown bull, would be worth $10,000. Who sold it to him? My dad said the foreman. The rancher said, ok, since it's castrated and for 4-H he can keep it, but I got to charge him with Cattle Rustling so he can be at the trial to testify against the foreman. My dad said, do what you need, he'll be there. So, at 13 I was charged with Cattle Rustling.

Probably 20 years ago I was at my cousins farm in northern Missouri when his neighbor had an entire herd of beef cattle stolen. Smaller herds are usually relatively tame which helps in operations like this and quite often smaller herds are NOT branded. What was finally discovered after a LOT of good police work was a very organized operation indeed.  

Modern cattle thieves are not stupid. First they have a place to sell the cattle lined out far ahead of the theft. They spend time finding the right herd of cattle to steal and the perfect spot to steal them from. They also spend time so they know the farm routine and what the best time of day would be best to operate. A lot of farmers have city jobs and are away during the day. Others may only check on the herd in the morning or evening. That leaves a lot of time with no eyes on their prize. In the instance I know about ... the cattle were in a back pasture for the summer that had a small wooded area to provide shade that blocked the view from the farm yard. The thieves had backed up a large trailer to a section of the pasture on a small farm road on the back fence line. The thieves had carried two rolls of fencing (possibly snow fencing) attached to the sides of the trailer at the back and they also had several well trained dogs. They cut the fence near a post, the driver rolled out the snow fencing to form a funnel into the back of the trailer and started making splices in the fencing ends that they cut. Meanwhile the other thieves sent the dogs to round up the herd. As the herd came into the snow fence funnel the ends were brought together penning in the herd with the only exit being the trailer. As they loaded onto the trailer the driver began winding up the funnel panels and shutting trailer door sections as they filled up. When the last cow was on the trailer they shut the door. One finished winding up the funnel panels and loaded the dogs while others patched the fence so that the breech was hard to discover without a lot of work. With a patched fence and hard dry ground that made sure tire tracks were not visible, it was like they were never there. They stole the entire herd in under 30 minutes most likely. A few minutes on back roads hit the highway and an hour later you are in another state. It likely took almost a whole day before the farmer missed his herd and by the time the theft was reported the herd was already sold and probably on the way to a processing plant.

Having been around the loading of cattle into trailers & tractor trailers all my life what I find amazing is that no one heard it. That's NOT a quiet endeavor by any stretch of the imagination. Strange indeed. One tip I'd offer to anyone with acreage & livestock is to get at least a pair of the plug-in intercoms. Place one unit in an outbuilding locked to the on position & the other unit in your bedroom. It's amazing how much you can hear that you'd normally miss with just a single outdoor unit. We have two on opposites sides of our land & I don't miss much that happens outside at night. After a while you'll learn to sleep through the normal noises & only awaken to the abnormal ones. The one requirement is that the power in the outbuilding must come from your house meter rather than from a separate one. Cheap insurance.

Thanks for bringing this to the global attention. You can hear and see the concern in your voice and face. I automatically went on auto pilot and thought of other reasons that could be possible just like you. This is very concerning . My heart is with you and all of the other ranchers across the United States.

Yellowstone is a very interesting series. I never expected the pearls of wisdom that have come out of this series. I totally agree with you Charlie. This series clearly points out how corporations will stop at nothing to achieve their goals which is usually making a lot of money. I watch this series, at times I feel so sad because I have a bad feeling this way of life is dying.

These cattle mutilations have been going on for a long time. The best documentary I've seen on this subject was made for tv in the 80's by news reporter Linda Moulton Howe. It's called "A Strange Harvest”.

This has happened in New Zealand too over the last few years. One big farmer down south in ashburton has lost over 500 head of cows. Apparently this farm usually runs ahead of $1,300.gone without a trace No reports of mutilations as far as I'm aware. But cattle definitely disappearing around the country.

I hunt in Alberta we came across a kill from wolves and it was a Stear there’s nothing left you could tell that it was wolfs because of the tracks we stopped and talk to the rancher because we know him pretty good and he said yeah It was a pack of wolves not even a week ago so if it wolves that are killing the cattle you should be able to tell because they’ll make one hell of a mess they don’t care how dirty the area looks after they’re finished