Third cattle mutilation found in county

By Randy Woock
Staff writer, The Times Independent

A cattle was found mutilated on a ranch in northern Las Animas County last weekend, the third to be found in such a state this month.

The mutilated cow was owned by Jim Garren, and found at about 1:30 p.m. March 21 by his ranch manager on Garren's land located about 12.5 miles southeast of Walsenburg.

"Her udder had been surgically removed," Garren said. "And that's the extent...there wasn't any other trauma on the cow at all."

The two-and-a-half year old Kobe and Angus crossbreed had last been seen at feeding time the previous day. It had also given birth to a calf that night that was discovered hiding in the brush about 50 yards from the carcass.

Garren said that he noticed no tracks around the carcass. "No marks, no disturbance of any kind of the soil," he said. "She was partially underneath a juniper tree, and there was no breakage in the tree, no branches or anything; it just looked like the cow had laid down very peacefully; there was no trauma on the cow, on her head or any parts of her body, we could find zero holes."

Garren added, "There wasn't any blood around anywhere."

Asked if he was aware of the other cattle mutilations that have taken place around the county recently, Garren replied, "Yeah, I just didn't think it would happen to me; guess I got elected."

Garren contacted authorities after discovering the carcass and was put in touch with the local brand inspector.

The first of the new wave of cattle mutilations reported in Las Animas County occurred March 8 to a cow owned by Trinidad School District No. 1 instructor Mike Duran. That cow had been discovered by Duran lying dead on its side by a stream at his winter grazing pastures west of Weston, it's udder and uterus removed. The second mutilation, a week old calf, was discovered March 17 by owner Tom Miller on his ranch east of Hoehne.

Miller reported that the only things left on the calf was some hide, the forelegs and its neck and head. "All the rest of the organs were gone...you could look right into the ribcage and everything," Miller said during a previous interview, adding that the hipbones on the calf were also broken.

Miller and Duran both reported a previous mutilation as having occurred in their herds in the mid-to-late 1990s. Garren said the March 21 mutilation was his first.

"He probably picked my best bred heifer out of the whole herd," Garren said. "That's the way it goes; when you lose one it's your best one."

Through the county's brand inspector Garren was put in touch with Chuck Zukowski, a field investigator from the Mutual UFO Network who also investigated the Duran and Miller mutilations.

"What was interesting about the Garren mutilation is that the stomach tissue was still there," Zukowski said. "You figure if a predator would get it, it would not only go for the udder but also take the stomach tissue."

Zukowski noted that predators seemed to have gotten to the carcass somewhat the following night, but that pictures taken upon discovery of the carcass that afternoon showed it untouched.

"It was just completely incomprehensible how anything or a body, person or whatever would have the ability to do that without leaving some sort of signatures around," Garren said.

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