CBS 19 - The Eye of East Texas News - Wood County Livestock Deaths

Wood County Livestock Deaths

By Lynne Sullivant

For a little more than a month, farmers in Wood County have been losing livestock to a mysterious predator.  And so far, experts don't know what's killing them.

Brent Neighbors raises several animals on his land, but lately the numbers have been decreasing.

"I've lost three lambs from here and then I have a secondary pasture and I've lost three over there," described Neighbors.

Neighbors isn't alone.  Down the road, Judy Potts lost three calves and her dog in 10 days.

"We noticed our calves weren't in the pasture and we went out looking and we found the hide of two. They were eaten from the inside," said Potts.  This skin was all that remained of Potts' calves.   

Both say the losses are financially devastating.

Neighbors said, "losing two or three to something like this a year just wipes my whole year out really but especiallysix6 or more to come."

"I had three heifers and one little bull and we were gonna keep the heifers for breeding and that was gonna be the start of our herd. Now I'm down to one calf, so that was the whole year's herd right there," explained Potts.

Neighbors sent for a trapper from the State Wildlife Management office to see if he could help.  He offered Neighbors advice.  Neighbors described, "there's some areas under the fences where maybe some animals have been coming through and where to purchase some live traps to catch them."

Experts say it may be more that one kind of predator.  State wildlife management says something as small as a raccoon can attack the baby goats, but they suspect something larger, like a mountain lion, or a coyote is responsible for the cattle attacks.

What's important to these farmers is their animals are dying and they want to know why.

A 1931 law, provides funds for the wildlife management service to send trappers out to help farmers who have lost livestock.  The only problem is that the program isn't supported in Wood County.

"The counties have to participate in that program with somewhere around two thousand dollars a month in funds to make a trapper available to us," said Neighbors.  Only three counties in Texas participate in the trapper program.

The closest one is in Hunt County.

For information about the Law:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1996/rc96003.pdf
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.4819.IH:

http://tejasbarbadoranch.tripod.com