Cattle trampled farmer to death on his own land
Tragedy a ‘one-off’ accident, inquiry told
A FARMER was trampled to death by his own cattle in a ‘one-off’ incident, a Fatal Accident Inquiry was told yesterday.
Tommy MacFarlane, 69, was unable to get out of the way of a cow which jumped over 5ft hurdle gates being used to pen the animals at his farm.
The half-ton heifer caught its hooves between the bars and brought two heavy metal gates crashing down onto Mr MacFarlane’s chest, banging his head off the ground in the process.
As the first beast escaped into the yard at Cuthill Farm, near West Calder, West Lothian, others followed, also trampling him as he lay on the ground.
Mr MacFarlane was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where X-rays showed he had rib fractures and a significant laceration on his head.
He was later transferred to a different ward and treated for pneumonia. The FAI at Livingston Sheriff Court heard that Mr MacFarlane had suffered a stroke.
He also had lung disease and pre-existing heart problems which may have contributed to his death on August 8, 2016 – just weeks after the accident on June 20.
The formal cause of death was ‘complications of head and chest trauma following a farming accident’.
Eyewitness Andrea Taylor, 28, described the tragedy as a ‘one-off’ accident. Miss Taylor, whose family run a farm close to Cuthill, said she had never seen a cow leap so high.
She told the inquiry Mr MacFarlane, who was ‘like family’, had phoned on the morning of the accident to ask her to help him load cattle onto a truck heading for the slaughterhouse, something they had done together many times.
Mr MacFarlane stood just outside the makeshift pen while she and the lorry driver herded the cattle onto the loading ramp. But one cow ‘just wasn’t going on the lorry’.
Miss Taylor said: ‘We knew [the cow] was a bit wild. That’s why she was going away. We weren’t wanting to keep her to work with her.
‘It was a young cow, about 24 months. Once she jumped the gate, the other cattle decided they were going over it as well.’
She said the galvanised steel gate hit Mr MacFarlane’s chest, pushing him to the ground.
‘It was just one of those “one-off” things,’ she told the FAI. ‘It was just where he was standing. You could say it was the wrong place at the wrong time.’
She added: ‘It was maybe the weight of the gate and because his head struck the ground – but there was blood coming out of his head and he wasn’t moving.
‘I didn’t want to move him in case his back was injured, so I took the gate off him and phoned an ambulance. I could hear his breath, so I knew he was alive.’
Since the accident, she said, the practice of leaning pen gates against straw bales had been changed and the hurdles were now tied to a tractor for support.
No one was allowed to stand near the temporary fencing so there was no possibility of anyone else being trapped in similar circumstances.
Sheriff Douglas Kinloch will publish his findings in due course.
‘The young cow was a bit wild’