Cow mutilations have baffled ranchers and the authorities in the United States for decades with some convinced the cattle have been targeted by extraterrestrials conducting vile experiments on board a UFO. Or, as some sceptics assert, it’s all the work of sick and depraved human beings. Let’s investigate!
TRIGGER WARNING: Before reading further, be aware this is a blog post about gory attacks on cattle with details some readers may find triggering in some way. Those of a gentle disposition may wish to click away now.
On April 19, 2023, the Madison County Sheriff’s Office published a Facebook post detailing the mutilation of a six-year-old longhorn-cross cow. As so often happens in these cases, when one mutilation occurs – others follow. The police report stated:
“While looking into the longhorn-cross’ death, five other similar occurrences involving four adult cows and one yearling were reported along the area of OSR running into Brazos County as well as Robertson County. Each incident occurred in different locations, pastures, and herds. The other cows were found in the same condition, lying on one side with the exposed side of their face cut along the jaw line and the tongue, once again, completely removed. On two of the five cows, a circular cut was made removing the anus and the external genitalia. This circular cut was made with the same precision as the cuts noted around the jaw lines of each cow. Just like the first, there were no signs of struggle or disturbance in the grass, no blood spill, and no noticeable tracks. No predators or birds would scavenge the remains for several weeks after death. The cause of death of all six cows remains unknown.“
Cow mutilations have happened before with clusters of activity in the 1970s and 1990s. In the aftermath of these incidents, commentators have pointed an accusing finger at Satanists and aliens. The latter in particular have come under most suspicion. But why would beings from another world decide to abduct and rip apart cattle?
Alien abduction and cow mutilations
In 1980, farmer Pat McGuire took it upon himself to investigate a series of cow mutilations in the vicinity of Laramie, Wyoming. A 900-pound heifer had just been subjected to a grisly death. Its reproductive organs, nostrils, lips, and tongue were all missing. McGuire felt this loss keenly as he had lost two cows in a similar manner back in 1976. Three years earlier, in 1973, McGuire witnessed a 600-foot flying saucer glowing “like a harvest moon” over his farm.
Under hypnosis, it turned out McGuire had been taken aboard a UFO about sixteen times – going back to 1970. In the UFO abduction that year, he was instructed by the aliens to buy the land he now owned and farmed at Laramie. Then in 1976, one of his cattle was snatched by the extraterrestrials but none had been taken since. However, the UFOs kept coming – and with greater regularity. The Casper Star-Tribune newspaper spoke to his wife and children who backed up their father’s story.
McGuire also received support from an unlikely source – an academic at the University of Wyoming. Professor Leo Sprinkle (1930-2021) stated: “There is evidence to suggest a direct connection between UFOs and cow mutilations. And he described the mutilations as a “complex, mysterious matter”. In contrast, a local veterinarian, Dr Herman Hancock, disagreed arguing that the cow deaths were easily explainable as the act of natural predators.
DISCOVER: Why do Preppers think the world is about to end?
Elsberry Missouri – UFO sightings and cow mutilations
In the late 1970s, the town of Elsberry, Missouri also experienced an increased in UFO sightings coupled with reported cow mutilations. As with the Wyoming cases, the local vet and police department were sceptical while local ranchers seemed more likely to buy into the alien abduction point of view. In April, 1978, the carcasses of six cows were found with an eye, ear, udder, genitals, or rectum removed. Some tried to blame a “devil cult” in the area but most linked the incidents to the sight of colourful lights in the sky at around the same time.
Various UFO groups from across the United States descended on Elsberry including Walter Andrus, a Texan described as the international director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), “one of the top two or three experts in the United States on UFOs”, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. Many ranchers who had lost cows noted the absence of blood around the carcass as very suspicious.
Law enforcement meets to discuss cow mutilations and the UFO menace
In 1976, law enforcement officers from Colorado and Utah met to discuss the issue of cow mutilations. Sheriffs and sheriff’s deputies were reported to be “good and spooked” over what was going on. Newspaper journalists were allowed to attend the conference but warned to be careful how they reported the details of incidents in case “ordinary kooks and cattle rustlers” engaged in copycat attacks. The aim was to nip this in the bud – not encourage a wave of cow mutilations.
Sheriff Keith Hansen from Carbon County, Utah, talked about a case he had investigated in November 1975. He found a cow with its jaw, heart, tongue and lung neatly removed. There was no blood and the University of Utah medical examiner informed the astonished sheriff that the incisions had been made “with a laser beam”. There were no tracks around the dead animals except some left by coyotes that had approached the carcass but then “strangely, left”.
Garfield undersheriff Bob Hart told the gathering that in February 1975 he had seen two dead calves with “identical and geometrically precise pieces of hide removed from the necks”. Again, no sign of blood or a struggle. Hart, who had worked in a slaughterhouse, was convinced that only a laser beam could cut like that. But he added “you’d have to bring in tonnes of equipment to cut cows with laser beams, at least any laser beams we know about”.
Also present at this meeting was Idaho state criminal investigator Steve Watts, who was also a cattle rancher, and he had been puzzled by the refusal of other livestock to go anywhere near the carcass of a mutilated cow. So much so that he’d taken infra-red photos of incident areas. He noted that a lot of the vegetation around these cows was dead – over a surprisingly large area.
But he believed the attackers were “regular earth-type humans who belong to witchcraft-type cults”. To Watts, the desire of occultists to want certain parts of cows made perfect sense whereas aliens were “intelligent enough to do other things than these cattle mutilations”.
FIND OUT MORE: UFO hotspots, sightings, and triangles
Journalism students investigate
In 1975, journalism students at Drake University, Iowa, were asked to look into cases of cow mutilations to practice their investigative skills. Their findings were then reported in the Globe-Gazette newspaper. They noted the removal of the same body parts and the absence of blood. Death could have been due to natural causes with scavengers like skunks, foxes, and coyotes, then feeding on the carcasses. However, none of these animals was capable of killing a cow. But they would feed on the dead body’s “soft parts” – hence the missing tongues, etc.
Then the students looked at allegations that the cow mutilations were an insurance hoax. One farm insurer pointed out that such attacks were excluded on policies though ranchers might have reported them as killings by wild animals. The idea of Satanic cults was not taken too seriously though one professor remarked on how the Romans had worshipped bulls in their cults.
A deranged killer was considered and also the possibility of fraternity initiation rights. The link to UFOs was older than many realised with reports of spacecraft-like objects hovering above farms as early as 1897.
1990s – the cow mutilators are back!
The 1980s appeared to show a dip in cow mutilations with a UFO link – or maybe less were reported. But come the 1990s, the cow mutilations picked up again. As with a great deal of UFO-related activity, the 1970s and 1990s seem to be the boom decades for alien activity.
Below is a list of just some of the many alleged cow mutilations reported in The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper in September 1994 – which detailed decades of incidents in the state of New Mexico.
- August 28 1975 – rancher Jimmy Wall discovers a dead calf whose udder and sexual organs had been removed on the Portales ranch
- August 31 1975 – Abiquiu rancher Alva Simpson finds his prize bull mutilated with sexual organs removed and the rectum “cored”
- 1976 – rancher Manuel Gomez finds one of what will be many cow mutilations at his farm in Dulce
- April and June 1978 – more mutilations at the ranch in Dulce with local state police officer Gabe Valdez reporting evidence a cow was clamped, lifted, and then dropped
- July 12 1978 – cow cut with “precision tools”
- February 1979 – evidence a cow dropped from a considerable height and tripod marks on the ground
- April 1979 – police officers sight a UFO aiming a beam at cattle on the Dulce ranch
- May to September 1979 – several cow mutilation cases at New Mexico ranches
- August 1980 – another cow mutilation but then cases drop off markedly
- 1993 – cow mutilations in the Eagle Nest and Angel Fire areas
- April and September 1993 – more cow mutilations
- April 1994 – nine-day old bull is mutilated
- April 12 1994 – sixteen-month-old heifer eviscerated near Taos
- Steers and heifers found dead in a similar manner throughout the summer of 1994
In 2000, the Las Vegas based National Institute for Discovery Science spoke to witnesses of cow mutilations with their associated UFO visitations. They believed that the UFOs were normally meteor showers, weather balloons, or missile launches. The cow mutilations proved harder to explain.
One former tribal police officer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Santa Fe claimed the government had hushed up incidents and even taken a cow away without returning it. He told The Taos News in January 2000 that not only did he believe cattle were being zapped by UFOs but that in Nevada, there were ancient petroglyph drawings of extraterrestrial spacecraft.
DISCOVER: The French king who believed he was made out of glass!
