Mutilated Cow Reported Near Trinidad, Colorado

A cattle rancher made a horrific and mysterious discovery Sunday when he found the carcass of one of his cattle that was missing its udders and other female parts.

No one is sure what killed the cow on a pasture near the Purgatoire River, but Trinidad rancher Mike Duran said he definitely finds the death unusual.

Duran, 49, said Monday that after the cow had been missing for two days, he went to look for it in a pasture where he runs cattle a mile west of the town of Weston near Colorado 12.

"I last saw her Friday. She's an older cow so I thought she may have died.

"On Sunday, I spotted her near the (Purgatoire) river bottom and went and looked at her. She was on her side and it looked a little odd. "When I took a closer look I saw that her udders had been removed," Duran said.

The cow had its udders cleanly cut off with no blood on or around the carcass, Duran said.

"It was a perfect circle almost like a laser cut," he said. "It's not like a knife. it seemed to be cut and sealed at the same time," he said.

This is not the first time Duran has found a mutilated cow on his ranch.

In 1995, Duran said he found a cow that had been mutilated the exact same way on the same pasture.

"The other cow's udders were snipped off the same way. It's hard to imagine what or who could have done this to me again," Duran said.

The mutilation in 1995 never has been solved.

Duran, who operates a 30-head cattle ranch, said that in both occurrences, there were no animal or human tracks around the carcasses.

"There was no blood around either and if you cut off an udder there would be a whole lot of blood," Duran said.

Cattle mutilation phenomena involve thousands of cases in North America in which cattle have been found mutilated under unusual circumstances. The cows are found dead (although the cause of death is undetermined), exsanguinated (all their blood has been removed) and have had certain organs removed from their bodies. Often their reproductive and rectal parts have been removed.

The thousands of reported cattle mutilations in the United States and around the world dating to the 1970s have spawned theories about aliens sent to Earth to slice up cows.

"I don't know if aliens are doing this or what, but whoever it is, I don't like it," Duran said.

"You look at cattle mutilations in other places and it's just really something that can't be explained. I don't know, maybe it's UFOs (unidentified flying objects) or maybe not," he said with a laugh.

Duran said neighbors near the pasture told him that they had not heard or seen anything this past weekend

Duran, who also is a teacher at Trinidad High School, said he is no expert on the subject of cattle mutilations, but has studied information on the Internet.

"I looked up some pictures and facts last night and there are similar occurrences to what has happened to me. Some are exactly the same," he reported.

Duran said he has notified the Las Animas County Sheriff's Department about the mutilated cattle.

Las Animas County Undersheriff Derek Navarette said his office takes cattle mutilations seriously, although no one has ever been charged with the crime.

"If it's someone here killing livestock, that's a crime," Navarette said. "The problem is that there's never any evidence around to support that anyone was there.

"It's an odd phenomenon. The cattle is just there dead," Navarette said.

There hasn't been a cattle mutilation case in the area for several years, Navarette said. The case is similar to most around the United States.

"The same body parts were removed. The place where the cow was found Sunday is almost impossible for a vehicle to get to.

"It's an unusual place," he said.

Navarette said his office will continue to investigate the case.

"This is simply a mystery and it is very odd," he said.

Two More Mutilated Cows Reported In Southern Colorado

Two more Southern Colorado ranchers say they have discovered cows mutilated under strange circumstances.

A cow on a ranch near Walsenburg was found with its udders cut off and a calf on a ranch near Trinidad was found missing the entire center of its body as well as its ears.

A similar mutilation was discovered March 8 on a pasture near the Purgatoire River, just west of the small town of Weston. That cow was found dead by rancher Mike Duran with its udders and reproductive organs surgically removed from its body.

The most recent case happened on Jim Garren's ranch.

Garren said Tuesday that he last saw his cow alive on Friday afternoon at his spread 12 miles southeast of Walsenburg in Las Animas County. Garren said the next day at around 2:30 p.m. his ranch manager was feeding the herd and noticed his cattle count was off by one. After looking around in areas where cows had grazed previously, Garren said his ranch hand spotted the animal dead under a cedar tree.

"The only thing that we could tell about her was that her udder had been surgically removed. There were no other injuries to that cow," Garren said.

He said the ground around the cow was never disturbed and there was no trauma to the cow's head or body.

"We searched and searched and we could not find blood on the ground or on the cow. I just can't understand how anyone could surgically remove a part from an animal and not spill some blood," he said.

Garren said that while doing a quick walk around looking for evidence on Saturday, his staff spotted the cow's newborn calf.

Garren said the calf had to have been born at least 10 hours before the mother cow was killed.

"You know I just can't explain this. I've had animals killed on my ranch by mountain lions before and coyotes, but nothing like this. It is truly strange.

"I don't see how any human could have possibly done this without leaving footprints or some prints where the cow may have struggled. It looks like she just laid down and died," Garren said.

Rancher Tom Miller, who runs 80 head of cattle about 14 miles east of Trinidad on U.S. 350, found one of his calves dead near a feed tub on March 17. He found it in an area where cows congregate to eat twice daily.

Miller said that the herd appeared normal the day before in the late afternoon when the animals were being fed by the ranchers. The calf was found the next morning roughly 5 feet from a feed tub laying dead with only its spinal column, head and legs left behind.

"It's the strangest thing I've ever seen," Miller said.

Miller said the only thing holding the calve's back legs to the body was the hide.

"I cut the hide and the legs just fell off. All the bones were broken. It was just strange," Miller said. "An animal just doesn't clean out a carcass like that in one night. It would take several days to do something like that."

Miller said about 10 years ago he found another one of his cows mutilated. That cow had its ears, tongue, eyes and reproductive organs removed.

In 1995, Duran said he found a cow that had been mutilated on his property in a similar way.

The mutilations never have been solved.

"I really don't know what it is. I think maybe it was a UFO. According to the circumstances, that is what it seems like," Miller said.

Miller said it would be too difficult for a human to take a calf away from its mother cow.

"The cows are too protective. If you went for a calf, the cow would be on top of you.

"There are just too many strange things here," Miller said.

Chuck Zukowski, an independent UFO investigator from Colorado Springs, has investigated all three cattle mutilations in the area.

"These mutilations have the tendency of happening a few at a time. So it is not uncommon that there are three here this month," Zukowski said.

Zukowski, who has been a UFO and cow mutilation investigator for more than 20 years, said that all three cases fit the criteria to be called an unknown phenomenon.

"These two cows and this calf do not fit the norm of a normal death or a predator death. This is the first thing we look at," Zukowski said.

In all three cases, Zukowski said there was no blood around the cattle where they laid.

"If a predator got to these cattle, there would be blood around somewhere, " he said.

Sightings of UFOs and strange, unmarked, black helicopters sometimes coincide with most cattle mutilation cases across the country.

Zukowski said that the night Miller lost his calf, he received a report of a dark triangular craft flying over Colorado Springs.

"A witness told me that the craft was coming from the southeast. That means it was coming from the Walsenburg/Trinidad area. We are in the process of trying to understand how fast this object was going to see if it could have been in that area," Zukowski said.

"It's a big speculation and we are trying to grasp at straws, but we are trying to find anything we can to relate these occurrences."

Zukowski said that whatever killed the cow and removed the udders on Garren's ranch was not interested in a newborn calf.

"Would a predator attack a 1,200 pound animal for food, when a newborn calf lay helplessly 50 feet away?" Zukowski asked.

Zukowski also is a member of the Mutual UFO Network, an international nonprofit group that investigates UFOs and other strange phenomena for the public.

"I am the biggest skeptic to start with on these cases. I need to be sure before I start saying what I think it is.

"I can tell you that it is very strange and doesn't seem possible by humans," Zukowski said.

The thousands of reported cattle mutilations in the United States and around the world have spawned theories about aliens sent to Earth to slice up cows.

The phenomena in Colorado began in the late 1960s when farmers in the San Luis Valley began reporting mutilated cattle and horses, Zukowski said.

The circumstances surrounding cattle mutilations were different than anything the local authorities had ever investigated. At the time, satanic cults were blamed.

Reports of cattle mutilations spread throughout the Midwest and even into Canada. Paranoia and speculation about the deaths ran rampant.

"All these years later not one person has been prosecuted for this. We don't know what has killed these animals," Zukowski said.

"Hopefully we can find out what happened, but it doesn't look too promising. This is not something we are used to," Garren said.

"I really hope somebody can figure out what is happening to these things. It's scary," Miller said.

Third Cattle Mutilation Reported in Southern Colorado, MUFON Investigating

Chuck Zukowski, a field investigator with the UFO Mutual Network, uses a Geiger counter to examine the body of rancher Tim Garren's cow

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.

NOTE: this is one of the earlier cattle mutilations reported from southern Colorado in March 2009. The photo was taken a few days after the mutilation. The video was made a bit later...in fact, MUFON had already investigated this incident before the video was made. The total number of mutilations in this area since March 2009 is unknown but there have been more reports than usual...Lon