Police investigating after cows found dead, mutilated across Texas
DALLAS – Six cows were mutilated in similar ways and found in different locations along a Texas highway, prompting multiple law enforcement investigations, authorities said.
A 6-year-old cow was recently found dead, lying on its side and missing its tongue in Madison County near State Highway OSR, a sheriff’s office news release said, referring to a stretch of Old San Antonio Road.
“A straight, clean cut, with apparent precision, had been made to remove the hide around the cow’s mouth on one side, leaving the meat under the removed hide untouched,” the release said. “The tongue was also completely removed from the body with no blood spill.”
Officials said the grass around the cow was “undisturbed” and there were no signs of struggle, footprints or tire tracks in the area. Ranchers told law enforcement no predators or birds would scavenge the cow’s remains.
Five similar cow deaths, involving four adult cows and one yearling, have been reported along the area of OSR in Brazos and Robertson counties.
The cows were found mutilated in the same manner with the tongue removed and nothing noticeable in the surrounding grass, but each cow was found in a different location and belonged to a different herd.
Two of the cows also had their genitalia and anuses removed.
No cause of death has been determined in any of the six cases.
Similar incidents have been reported across the nation, and deputies are working with other agencies to investigate, the release said.
Anyone with information on these cases can contact Madison County sheriff’s office investigator Foster at 936-348-2755.
There appears to have been a large number of cow mutilations across the U.S. in the 1970s, according to multiple media reports at the time. The incidents also involved cows’ faces and genitals being cut.
The killings prompted theories of aliens, cults or government involvement, but appear to have gone unsolved.
A New York Times article from 1975 said cow killings across 11 states left law enforcement and ranchers “baffled by the mysterious mutilations.”
The cows were found across the West and Midwest, including Texas, in large numbers, according to the article, which noted almost 200 cow deaths in Colorado between April and October that year. According to the History Channel, the FBI closed its investigation in 1980, saying that “none of the reported cases has involved what appear to be mutilations by other than common predators.”
More recently, Alaska Public Media reported state troopers were investigating a cow mutilation and the disappearance of two others in 2022, and a handful of bulls were found mutilated with no tracks nearby in Oregon in 2019.