Cattle's agonising death goes unpunished

By CLAIRE TREVETT


The rotting carcasses of cows litter the fields on a farm at Maungatapere, west of Whangarei.

Two are still tangled in the wire fences where they died, others lie where they fell after starving to death and one, bizarrely, is in a chicken coop with its exploded udder in shreds.

The sharemilker who left the carcasses unburied in the fields and dead calves lying in piles has left the farm without penalty.

Daryl Vercoe spent the past two years working on two properties in Maungatapere with his own stock and cows leased from other farmers.

The SPCA was called in September by people concerned about the state of the stock.

The case was then referred to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, which has finished its investigation without taking action.

Yesterday, the ministry told the Herald that there was no need to lay charges as Mr Vercoe no longer had any cattle.

When the SPCA visited, about 10 carcasses lay unburied and rotting; many are still there.

SPCA Whangarei chief inspector Francine Shields said dozens of dead calves lay in piles, and a vet taken in by the SPCA had to destroy several others because of their condition.

"About 50 per cent were severely underweight and the remaining ones were thin. Some were what we would call emaciated. There certainly was a heavy stock loss on the property."

The owner of the property, who did not want to be named, said he was disappointed at the response from the animal welfare watchdogs.

"If the SPCA had done their job when they were told, they would have confiscated about half of the cows. I'm not a farmer, but I know when an animal is starving and you do not get anything out of starving animals other than dead bodies."

But Francine Shields said the SPCA called the ministry in because its own resources could not cope with the scale of the problem.

MAF senior animal welfare investigator Earl Culham said he was satisfied with the decision not to take further action.

"I am told he [Mr Vercoe] no longer has any cattle on the farm so there is no need to lay charges. Obviously there is no animal welfare offence if he has no animals."

Asked why MAF had not laid charges, Mr Culham said the case was no different from "hundreds of other cases we look at".

"Occasionally we need to prosecute and this just wasn't the case. We did what we had to do and the job was finished."

The Herald understands the sharemilker left the property because of financial difficulties.

Some of his equipment was taken by repossession agents and he had to return cows leased from other farmers and sell his own stock to help pay off debt.

The landowner said the property had been overstocked with about 180 cows, despite warnings that it could sustain only about 130.

The overstocking was compounded by a wet spring, which turned the grass into mud. Fonterra then stopped picking up the sharemilker's milk because its quality had reduced, he said.

The landowner said young farmers need to be monitored more closely to prevent their falling victim to the "numbers game" by overstocking farms and showing disregard for normal farming practices such as burying dead stock which could harbour disease.

"In my business you have to do a five-year apprenticeship. This guy had worked with some of the top dairy farmers in the area, but someone should be looking after these fellas starting out on their own. You just can't put a man out on the road with a couple of hundred cows."

The sharemilker had not taken help when they offered it, had wrecked farm equipment and had left owing them money.

Ms Shields said he could have sold some stock off when he started running into trouble but did not.

"There is no point closing your eyes and hoping the problem will go away. At that stage he was in financial difficulty and his best option would have been to get rid of some of the stock two months earlier."

Others in the area admitted it had been a harsh spring, but they had all been concerned at the state of the cows. One said many of the cows were malnourished, some of their hooves were rotting and they had not been treated.