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Cattle Mutilations

When blood is removed like that, it's called exsanguination. I just wanted to mention it, because it's such a great word.
 
I see that the Oregon case was already on our well-established Cattle Mutilations Thread!

The "rational" explanation is that predators make short work of the softest tissues. Which leaves the question, "why do experienced livestock people report these events as anomalies?" For me, the oddest aspect has always been the way interference with cattle has been a feature of UFO stories, since the days of the scare-ships and the telegraph-hoaxes. :thought:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I see that the Oregon case was already on our well-established Cattle Mutilations Thread!

The "rational" explanation is that predators make short work of the softest tissues. Which leaves the question, "why do experienced livestock people report these events as anomalies?" For me, the oddest aspect has always been the way interference with cattle has been a feature of UFO stories, since the days of the scare-ships and the telegraph-hoaxes. :thought:
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Did you see the cow, horse and UFO situation in this article from '53? Also the "Terror of Guerande":

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...newspaper-articles.65811/page-12#post-1900626

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/cattle-mutilations.1655/page-5#post-1895608

Scientists at OSU in Corvallis did much work on the mutilation cases -- and no explanation for them.
 
They are making a surprisingly huge national deal out of five animals from last summer. It's interesting that there is almost nothing new in this story compared to the same "flaps" decades ago. One exception - the "exsanguination" idea now prompts choruses of commenters yelling "Chupacabra!". I find the "not a drop of blood" trope to be very obviously ridiculous. They died without a wound so the blood pools in the body cavity, coagulates, and gets eaten by various things like flies.

Only a smattering of the reports on this story even mention the lack of necropsies and tissue samples in an effort to officially detect and document what could have happened to them. I think that is the weirdest thing about it. It's all speculation promoted by the media. Since some agencies are looking into it, I hope they actually produce a documented report.

It seems like dead animals are a theme that is used most effectively to support fringe worldviews of the time - be they aliens, satanic cults, maniac animal killers, a secret government project, mysterious elusive predators, toxins in the environment, Sasquatch...
 
Sharon Hill said:
They are making a surprisingly huge national deal out of five animals from last summer. It's interesting that there is almost nothing new in this story compared to the same "flaps" decades ago. One exception - the "exsanguination" idea now prompts choruses of commenters yelling "Chupacabra!". I find the "not a drop of blood" trope to be very obviously ridiculous. They died without a wound so the blood pools in the body cavity, coagulates, and gets eaten by various things like flies.
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The crucial issue is whether any hair follicles were cut or not. Animals and bugs don't cut hair follicles.
 
I suspect terrestrial predation is responsible for a lot of it, and the pics in the news may have not always been taken short!y after the occurrences. There are the cases where even the farmers think they are unusual; no sign of tearing, struggle, no prints on the ground, etc. And in some cases the events happen in minutes, iirc. (like the dog that suddenly yelped and was found to be suddenly crushed as in the "Terror of Guerande" ). And then there are the cases where UFOs are seen in conjunction with the events. There are many cases where livestock and horses panic inthe presence of UFOs.
 
Sharon Hill said:
It seems they don't even think to look for stuff like that, just blast it out to the media. Seems irresponsible.
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Yeah, that's why I mentioned it. I couldn't find the info anywhere in the article, and it is the basic point that separates a death by misadventure from something more sinister.
 
That sounds like the daft stuff the BBC put out.

Anyhow, if there is a dead animal...why dont the scavengers get it?
 
An allegedly suspicious calf death / mutilation in the UK ... Photos of the dead calf and its injuries are included at the link below.
Calf found with surgical 'ball-shaped' injury baffles UK paranormal researchers

A bizarre “animal mutilation” case has been reported in Yorkshire – and paranormal investigators say the dead animal could have been "dropped from above".

Reports of livestock being skinned with surgical precision and drained of blood – often associated with UFO sightings – have been a regular part of paranormal lore for decades. But most of them come out of the American Midwest.

This strange story of a calf killed by some unknown force or predator comes from the Gaddings Dam Area of Todmorden,in Yorkshire.

Paranormal researcher Deborah Hatswell was sent images of the extraordinary find by Albert Tyas ,who was out walking in the area on July 4.

The corpse of the calf was found, somewhat unusually, in a field where sheep were grazing. ...

“This kill has all the classic signs of animal mutilation,” Deborah told Daily Star Online.

“Notice the very precise clean cuts,”she added, “there are no signs of attack or a chase of any kind.” ...
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FULL STORY (With Photos):
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/calf-found-surgical-ball-shaped-22404494
 
This 2002 Fortean Times article surveyed the 2002 wave of cattle mutilations that erupted in Argentina. The article - once hosted on the now-defunct FT articles archive - is still accessible via the Wayback Machine.
RETURN OF THE MOOTILATORS

Already a favourite with gourmets and McDonalds munchers all over the world, Argentinean beef now appears to have drawn admirers from a little further afield. MARK PILKINGTON sharpens his steak knife.
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From FT 163 OCTOBER 2002

https://web.archive.org/web/2005112...rteantimes.com/articles/163_mootilators.shtml
 
A couple of recent articles which seem to indicate this enigma persists.

Possible Investigations Task Force In The Works For Oregon After More Cattle Killings

Source: nwnewsnetwork.org
Date: 31 July, 2020

Two more cattle have been mysteriously killed in rural eastern Oregon.

A black-coated cow was found dead in July outside of Fossil, found sitting with her legs tucked under her body with her head off the ground. Pictures show her eyes bulging out with flies around the body. The cow’s tongue and genitals were removed.

“It was a clean cut, so it wasn’t wildlife,” Wheeler County Sheriff’s deputy Jeremiah Holmes said. “There were upwards of 80 cows milling around there … so signs of tire tracks, boot tracks were pretty much non-existent.” Holmes later followed up with the Northwest News Network to say there was no official cause of death determined yet, but a “partial boot print” was found about 100 yards from the cow.

It follows another killing near Condon, Oregon, in March. A Hereford bull was found dead, lying on its side in a remote draw, its sex organs and tongue removed. The rancher who found his animal described cuts so precise no blood was on the bull’s white underbelly.

Holmes, working the case near Fossil, says his department is trying to assemble a statewide task force to address recent killings.

[...]

https://www.nwnewsnetwork.org/post/...force-works-oregon-after-more-cattle-killings


Oregon Cattle Mutilations Remain A Mystery

Source: Drovers
1 October, 2020

Oregon officials are investigating another mysterious mutilation of a cow near Ukiah in Umatilla County. Rancher Fee Stubblefield found the carcass on Sept. 12, reporting the skin around the cow’s mouth was sliced away, and it’s tongue, glands and sex organs had been cleanly removed. A piece of the cow’s ear was cut off and placed on its neck.

“It’s a very unusual cut,” Stubblefield told the Blue Mountain Eagle newspaper. “There was no blood.”

He found no footprints or tracks as evidence of someone traveling through the area. He called the Oregon State Police and the incidence was confirmed a mutilation kill.

“We got lucky because we found the cow within a couple days of when it had been killed, so it really yielded some good photos and hopefully some good evidence,” he said.

The September mutilation is similar to other incidences in Oregon over the past year. At least two others have occurred in Stubblefield’s area, with one of the mutilated cows found in a very remote location.

Officials say the mutilations are usually found with their tongues and genitals removed without signs of a struggle. During the summer of 2019, five bulls were found mutilated on the Silvies Valley Ranch in Harney County. Another mutilation was found near the border of Lake and Deschutes County in September.

Colby Marshall, vice president of Silvies Valley Ranch, told The Capital Press last year the bulls died with no outward signs of a struggle — no rope burns on trees, no scattered hoof prints, no strangulation marks. The bulls, he said, look like they simply fell over and died.

Another mutilated cow was found near Fossil in Wheeler County on July 23. The carcass was found upright with its legs tucked underneath it, and authorities located a partial boot print about 100 yards away from the scene.

Stubblefield told the Blue Mountain Eagle that predators and scavengers are avoiding and refusing to eat the carcass. Coyotes have approached the area but keep their distance, he said, and birds will land on the body briefly before flying away.

[...]

https://www.drovers.com/article/oregon-cattle-mutilations-remain-mystery
 
Great article about US military helicopters/ unmarked helicopters seen in connection with cattle mutilations:

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2022...-aircraft-and-their-possible-ufo-connections/

“According to Colborn, by the end of the 1980s, there were “well over 200 accounts of mystery helicopters near or at or in the vicinity of mutilation sites.” While he acknowledged that some of the reports had merely been “innocent flyovers” that were unrelated to the animal mutilations occurring nearby, there were nonetheless “too many reports of helicopters that harass herds of livestock, spotlighting cattle, chasing ground observers and even landing in pastures.”
 
Cattle mutilations seem to me to be a loose category of different causes and effects.

I would like to know what types of animal deaths or disappearances are covered by insurance or governmental payments, such as for wolf predation on livestock in the US. If a stockman will get an insurance reimbursement for a mysterious death – all the blood drained, clean edges, etc. – then this will be a tempting, confounding factor in the story. Also, which are all the countries in which mysterious cattle mutilations occur? What was the year in which cattle mutilations first became documented?

Other confounding factors:
Rustling as a cause of mysterious disappearances. Rustling still happens in the US and Canada.
Exaggeration.
Delusion or follie. I think this is a big part of the Skinwalker Ranch stories.
Well-intentioned misunderstanding of what is going on.
Conflation: dead cow and helicopters = helicopter crew killed cow.

All the above is separate from evil governmental research, aliens, and time travelers. The US government owns and controls many millions of acres of land, and does odd, undisclosed research there. It has no need to conduct secret animal experiments on private stock, and there are all kinds of reasons I find this unbelievable.

I have spent many happy hours wandering around in remote wildernesses in the US over the past 40 years. I always took the opportunity to examine any dead animals I ran across – or smelled my way to as the stench can be remarkable. I personally have never seen clean edges to the wounds. The apparent clean edges, on closer examination, have little tears in them. I have seen this in the usually round holes from the bloat caused by bacterial decay.

Just last year, I was able to watch the predator and decay process in a large (2000 pound) bull that had been hit by a vehicle, and then pushed off the road by the clean-up crew. This was near Bear Ears, Utah, US. Over the course of four days, different predators and scavengers ate it in different ways, and there seemed to be a natural sequence to the scavengers, based on what they could or could not get at. I assume that during the night, different mammals, maybe rodents, badgers, porcupines, bears, foxes, coyotes or wolves, also were eating it. Always, in the morning, big areas had been eaten away compared to the previous evening. There was no clean eating away of the surface soft tissue areas of eyes, muzzle, genitals, and anus. The birds – eagles, vultures, corvids – all waited until another, mammalian carnivore ripped open the carcass to really make inroads. Up until then, only the eyes and the tongue were eaten. The eagles ate whenever they wanted, and the other birds would hop away. The ravens would wait for the vultures to leave. The ravens were the only birds I saw who actually went completely into the abdominal cavity and stayed there, presumably munching away. A raven would only do this if other ravens were outside, standing watch. Never alone. There was a lot of blood from the dead animal, but this may have been a result of being hit by a car.

I think that big cats, which in the US would be cougars, are more likely to leave clean edges than other carnivores. This unscientific guess is based on the precision with which house cats eat prey.

Ps – yes, I have eclectic interests. My husband has long since given up trying to cure me and has instead joined me.
 
Erinaceus said:
It isn't only cattle that have been mutilated. There was this 1967 case of a horse in Colorado and, more recently, a wave of equine deaths and mutilations in France.

https://alamosanews.com/article/after-50-years-snippy-still-a-mystery
https://www.connexionfrance.com/art...rse-attacks-Horse-owners-doubt-police-figures
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54065973
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Yes, thank you for reminding us of the larger mystery, and that nutjobs who mutilate animals for various reasons should be added to the list of confounding factors. Erinaceus, do you have any idea or be willing to hazard a guess about how many countries have documented animal mutilations?

I shall now do my famous off-track trick (TM) and link to a related discussion of occult activities:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...red-in-homes-other-places.54463/#post-2156277
 
I don't know a lot about the subject. I was reading through the topic and the Snippy case came to mind. Google mentions sheep mutilations in 1606 in the London/southeast England area. No mystery helicopters back then!
 
We have had sheep mutilations on Dartmoor over the years, and a more recent spate was well documented in the book 'Killers on the Moor' by Mike Freebury (2011, if you can find a copy).

There were suggestions of satanic practices seized upon by the media but subsequently ruled out by Freebury's investigation. There is always the possibility of the illegal meat trade and sadly sheep poaching is all too common in the UK. There are also a lot of displaced individuals who will at times live rough on the moor in old camper vans and even tents at the many parking areas (i have driven past at night and seen small communities of them). Sadly many of them are homeless ex-military with drink and drugs problems and frankly I wouldn't put it past one or two of them to catch and butcher a sheep for free meat.

However, many of the cases investigated by Freebury were away from the roads parking areas and out on the open moor and also bore all the classic hallmarks of cattle mutilations, with no blood evident, clean and precise cuts and missing organs,. There was also the vexing issue of why predators such as crows, foxes and buzzards avoided these carcasses. Freebury, an acknowledged UFO ETH believer, experienced some anomalous light manifestations whilst staking out the moor at night and concluded it was the work of extraterrestrials.

Personally, I just don't know. There is a large military presence on the moor, so sightings of military helicopters are commonplace. This book was one reason I found myself living in a farm cottage on a Dartmoor farm between 2012-13, but alas neither heard any discussion of the phenomenon or saw anything despite some long walks and late night drives in my Land Rover. One thing I immediately became aware of was the large number of free-ranging cattle on the moor, which begs the question as to why sheep were chosen?
 
Incidentally, Freebury also investigated some supposed Dartmoor pony mutilations, and in particular one case in a very remote area that involved quite a number of deceased ponies. Personally, I was not so sure as they were discovered immediately after a severe blizzard that had cut Dartmoor off for days (also my village in Devon). Freebury fails to mention this. The ponies were found in a small valley with a stream running down it and this may have been a vain attempt by the ponies to find freshwater only for the snow to collapse/avalanche under them. But those are just my thoughts and their deaths were documented in the local media.
 
Coal said:
almost as if someone butchered the animals for their meat.
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Unfortunately it is always a possibility and one some people perhaps don't want to confront and it doesn't fit with a cosy image of the gentle countryside.

There is a truly curious case on the UK Paranormal Database of a man out walking his dog in the woods at 05.00 when he comes across a partly-submerged structure with a gently lit open window. When he peers inside he sees a sort of conveyer belt and then a human male appears within the window and tells him essentially to get lost. He went back to the site the next day and there was just a mound of earth. Interestingly, the police thought it to be connected to the illegal meat trade, that is some sort of mobile butchery trailer that had been camouflaged. I imagine the benefit of this is that you can dispose of the animals (I imagine sheep) and ship the joints out without having the headache and noise of moving live animals in a trailer or lorry.
 
Coal said:
almost as if someone butchered the animals for their meat.
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I read an article many years ago, either in The Anomalist, Strange magazine or Fate (I miss them all :() that commented that the pieces being taken were precisely the parts that were more susceptible to radiation damage, i.e. the bits you would want to analyse if you thought the animals had been exposed. I believe this was in relation to unidentified black helicopters in the US, and the suspicion that it was some off-the-books government monitoring project.
 
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