A DIABOLICAL RUSE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 10, 22 September 1944, Page 4

A DIABOLICAL RUSE

FOR the sake; of a few miserable shillings there are farmers (?) in this district who are prepared to stoop to almost unbelievable cruelty. Their action, dispicable and brutal as it is, furnishes just about an extreme illustration of the tally of persecution practiced by certain individuals against the helplessness of that poor, weakened creature;—the bobby calf. On the Rangitaiki, during the present season a strong effort has been\ made to take only calves over 3 days old, in order to avoid cruelty to the newly-born animal which could scarcely walk. In this way public opinion has been met and the popular clamour in the past, agajnst the shocking cruelties which unfortunately attended the trade, has not been so persistent. However it takes the low cunning of perversion to dodge even the best counter mea-< sures and believe it or not calves have been sent to the collecting lorries with the navel, the only indication of age, cut off short, in order to cover the true term of life. Thus newly-born animals are thrust" into the pens, lorried to the train, and trucked 200 miles with older and livelier ralves, slowly bleeding to death. The fiends responsible have this horrible work upon their own conscience but we earnestly bope along with every decent-thinking person in the district that they will be brought to account and punished with the utmost rigour of the law. (The instance related can be vouched for by four witnesses, who were present when the discovery was made at the trucking of a recent batch of calves to Auckland.)