Farmers rally to round up sodden cattle
Hundreds of cows were saved from drowning after a Manawatu¯ community pulled together to rescue them.
Pohangina Valley farmer Shane Carroll said his heart sank as he watched half his herd get washed down a swollen river during the wild weather that lashed the region last week.
‘‘One old girl dived into the river, and 250 of the silly things followed her in,’’ said Carroll.
However, his community quickly rallied behind him to conduct a region-wide search that eventually found almost all of the missing cattle.
As the Pohangina River filled in the heavy rain, Carroll and a farmhand set out to move the 300 cattle they were grazing near the riverbank to higher ground.
‘‘But the river came up so fast we couldn’t get there as quickly as we needed to.’’
The duo were coming in from different directions, and the high waters cut the farmhand off from the herd.
Carroll spent nearly two hours in water up to his waist, herding the cattle towards safer pastures on his own, until disaster struck.
Buffeted by the current and cattle, he desperately fought to drive the animals back onto the riverbank.
‘‘They nearly took me with them, but I managed to turn about 90 cows around.’’
But the rest were swept away. Out of the 430 cows Carroll owned, more than 200 were gone – a potential $300,000 loss, based on Inland Revenue average market values.
Carroll said offer after offer of help came in from the community, and it all kicked up a notch when Fonterra Manawatu¯ area manager Max Johnston called in the cavalry.
Johnston rang almost every farmer on the banks of the Manawatu¯ and Pohongina rivers, he said.
And Barry Moar, who runs a local deer-recovery business, loaned a helicopter to take Carroll up for an aerial search.
Between the searching farmers and two flights over the region, Carroll managed to find most of the missing cows, leaving 40 dead or missing.
‘‘The amazing thing is how resilient they are.
‘‘Some of them were washed up to 20 kilometres downriver, and wherever their feet hit the ground, they just got out and started wandering around.’’
The cows were scattered along the banks of the Manawatu River – and one was found ambling down the road near Ashhurst, nearly 30km from home.
Another handful, in ones and twos, had somehow managed to get themselves stuck deep in the blackberry brambles on a nearby reserve.
Carroll and his staff spent days hacking paths through dense, 10-foot-tall, bramble patches to get them out.
And even days later the occasional cow was popping up.