prepdeb
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Cattle carcasses piling up in Roosevelt County
Posted: April 2, 2008 08:56 PM CDT
PORTALES, N. M. (KRQE-KBIM) - Dozens of dead cows and bulls including newly-born calves have been found rotting on the side of a rural road in eastern New Mexico.
Over the weekend calls flooded the Roosevelt County Sheriff's Department reporting the gruesome scene on County Road 3. Nearly 50 carcasses eventually were found.
"We've seen a big increase in dead animal dumping here, particularly dead bull calves," Chief Deputy Sheriff Malin Parker said. "We went from one calf one day, and inside of a week we had upwards to 47 dead bull calves dumped in this stretch of road."
The sheriff's office doesn't know how they died, but investigators believe it may be from a lack of care from birth. Some calves still had their umbilical cords attached.
The problem is not a new one.
"If you as you're going through the ditches here, the entire stretch were we've already cleaned up, there's bones, patches of cowhide," Parker said.
Deputies are trying to figure out who is doing this, but with 13 deputies patrolling 2,500 square miles they know catching the culprits will be tough.
"To put somebody on one spot in the county and try to enforce that one spot is very difficult," Parker said. "It's very frustrating because when you catch somebody the problem seems to crop right back up."
Investigators don't believe local dairy farmers are responsible but instead suspect independent calf raisers in the area, he added.
The county recently applied for a clean-up grant to help pay the extra costs for the manpower, equipment, time and fuel costs to transport the dead calves to the Clovis landfill.
Posted: April 2, 2008 08:56 PM CDT
PORTALES, N. M. (KRQE-KBIM) - Dozens of dead cows and bulls including newly-born calves have been found rotting on the side of a rural road in eastern New Mexico.
Over the weekend calls flooded the Roosevelt County Sheriff's Department reporting the gruesome scene on County Road 3. Nearly 50 carcasses eventually were found.
"We've seen a big increase in dead animal dumping here, particularly dead bull calves," Chief Deputy Sheriff Malin Parker said. "We went from one calf one day, and inside of a week we had upwards to 47 dead bull calves dumped in this stretch of road."
The sheriff's office doesn't know how they died, but investigators believe it may be from a lack of care from birth. Some calves still had their umbilical cords attached.
The problem is not a new one.
"If you as you're going through the ditches here, the entire stretch were we've already cleaned up, there's bones, patches of cowhide," Parker said.
Deputies are trying to figure out who is doing this, but with 13 deputies patrolling 2,500 square miles they know catching the culprits will be tough.
"To put somebody on one spot in the county and try to enforce that one spot is very difficult," Parker said. "It's very frustrating because when you catch somebody the problem seems to crop right back up."
Investigators don't believe local dairy farmers are responsible but instead suspect independent calf raisers in the area, he added.
The county recently applied for a clean-up grant to help pay the extra costs for the manpower, equipment, time and fuel costs to transport the dead calves to the Clovis landfill.