is supposed to be immediately released and the cow s supposed to be supported gently on either side. the cow was struggling to balance herself. she was just banging her head over the concrete again and again. howling while the worker were laughing. this poor cow s having its face dragged along the concrete. oh, my god, it s going up into the air. that s, that s terrible. that s very obviously abuse. the worker is joking about it. what is not supposed to happen is that the cow s raised into the air, using the hip hoist, which can significantly damage the bone and the soft tissues, causing further trauma. not to mention the amount of fear this cow must be enduring. farm vet roger blowey had a rather different take on the footage. what s being done there is, in, in my experience, would be fairly common practice.
from the farm in wales to a barrister who s handled many animal abuse prosecutions. so that s hitting a cow with a shovel? yes, quite clearly, that would constitute an offence and we would prosecute something like that. it s basically an assault against the animal. it s quite a hard watch, that, actually, isn t it? it is. there s no good reason for kicking the animal while it s stricken. it s going to cause, especially to the stomach, some unnecessary suffering and pain. so a likely breach of the law? yes. a hip hoist is a valuable tool for a farmer to use to get a stricken cow back up on its feet. the circumstances in which it s been used here are quite inappropriate. is it likely to be something that might be prosecuted? potentially, yes. what s your overall view of what you ve seen?
euthanasia. but instead of paying the vet to euthanise the dying cow there and then, the cow was left until a slaughterman could put it down the following day. it means she was suffering almost 2a hours from the time we saw her. i would ve expected them to have got the vet, erm, to have euthanised the cow. erm, but even more surprising, i would ve expected there would be somebody on farm who was capable of doing that sort of thing. as soon as reasonably possible. we took the undercover footage
is there not a potential to damage the hips? i suppose there must be a potential, but i mean, it s done so commonly without any damage. and isn t it also likely that the cow is in some distress or pain when that s happening? absolutely, definitely. yeah. yeah, definitely. so, what you have to balance is the, the stress and the pain of that over a short period of time to be put into a nice environment versus the, the alternative, which would be to be left where she was. when animals are beyond help, the law requires them to be put out of their suffering promptly. but that didn t always happen on this farm. this cow was severely ill and in need of attention. a vet, who was treating another cow at the farm, was asked about it. have you seen the other cow? the, the recumbent one on the fl. - that couldn t. you know, the one who s lying on the straw. - oh, yeah, yeah. the vet that was present acknowledged that they are suffering and advised prompt
milk from the cow contains very high levels of antibodies. it s essential for the calves early development, but farm workers will then feed it to the calves by hand. by the time their mother returns from milking, they ve been moved to another part of the farm. they could be given that by hand and then returned to the mother. they could, and if you did that, you would increase the amount of bonding between the mother and calf, and when the separation comes, then there will be, in my opinion, a greater amount of trauma when the separation eventually comes. once separated, the calves are unlikely to see their mothers again. james griffiths has run this farm for 30 years.