KEY POINTS:
Two 42-year-old central North Island men will appear in Ohakune District Court next Friday to face animal cruelty charges after what police call a "barbaric" incident.
The charges follow the discovery by Ohakune police sergeant Mike Craig of a live cow impaled on the forks of a tractor front-end loader.
Mr Craig said he could not believe his eyes when he was driving past the tractor, on State Highway 49 between Ohakune and Waiouru, and saw the cow's head moving.
He slammed on the brakes and went to investigate.
Mr Craig described it as one of the most "barbaric and offensive" acts he had ever seen.
Instead of the head hanging down, as a dead animal's would, the head of cow was lifted up and it was obviously alive, he said.
On investigation, Mr Craig discovered that the farm manager had been asked to cull the cow, which was sick.
He had shot it in the side of the head near the top of the jaw, then left. However, the shot had not killed the animal and a short time later the farmer arrived with the tractor.
He impaled the cow by stabbing it below its spine, just in front of its hips, with one of the front-end loader forks, Mr Craig said.
He had travelled about 100 metres toward SH49 with the cow hanging on the fork.
"That's when I was driving past and saw it."
Mr Craig said that, after speaking to the farmer, the cow was released from the forks.
"And it walked away into a neighbouring paddock in an obviously distressed state.
"If I can drive past at 100km/h and pick that the thing is alive, I would have expected that a farmer sitting behind (on the tractor), driving forward with it hanging it in front of him, should have picked the same."
Mr Craig asked the farm manager to come back and humanely kill the animal but this shot hit the cow in the muzzle and still did not end its life.
It finally died after its throat was cut.
Mr Craig said the incident was so offensive even hardened policemen at his station did not want to hear the gory details.
- NZPA
