OVERCROWDED STOCK

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1074, 11 September 1930, Page 7

OVERCROWDED STOCK

CATTLE IN RAILWAY TRUCKS INSPECTOR TAKES ACTION From Our Oicn Correspondent TAUMARUNUI, Wednesday. One beast dead and two others with their ribs smashed to puip and so weak that they could only moan beneath the hoofs of their more fortunate truck mates was a scene described by Mr. M. McKinney, local inspector for the S.P.C.A., on the arrival of a train at the Taumarunui station yesterday. The inspector took the drastic action of immediately ordering the destruction of the injured animals. The tacts o£ the case seem to suggest that someone had blundered, or that inexperience had been at work, as two railway trucks consigned from Tapuata and Mangatawa to Franktou. had each been crammed, one with 20 steers and the other with 20 heifers. It is reported that only a percentage reached the destination. The animals, after many weary miles of travel, arrived here unfed and unwatered, and the truck bottoms being very slippery, each shunting operation was certain to throw a 'cumber of them down among the plunging hoofs of the terrified remainder. Besides those mentioned above, one of the heifers was dead on arrival at Taumarunui. This is the second occasion within a few weeks on which a similar occurrence has been noted on cattle trucks passing through here. The first t:rne, a truck heavily laden with dairy chttle near profit was found to have one cow down and so badly trampled that it died It is considered by the inspector that in the latest case if three trucks had been used instead of two, and the beasts given just one night's rest on grass during the journey, they would have arrived at Frankton in much better sale condition, and probably none of them would have died.