Gardaí are investigating an incident the Moville/Greencastle area of Donegal in which a calf appears to have its tongue cut out in a malicious attack.

“He didn’t bite it out… it appears to have been sliced out. It’s the whole tongue that is gone,” the farmer, John, told Highland Radio on Thursday. The month-old calf was in a pen with another calf in a locked shed and it was a clean cut.

The farmer made the point that if the calf had caught its tongue on something the cut would not have been so far back.

Knocked out

“You have to ask yourself what kind of a sick individual would do something like this. When we were working with the calf afterwards he was not easy to hold. There is a level of restraint that had to be done here. When the vet came to stitch it up it just wasn’t an easy task; the calf basically had to be knocked out until the bleeding had stopped.”

While the vet attended the calf to stitch up the wound, the calf is now having difficulty suckling.

You have to ask yourself what kind of a sick individual would do something like this

“It’s heartbreaking to watch it. He’s up trying to suckle the cow. The cow is trying to make him suckle but the teat gets in to the mouth and that’s as far as it goes. He’s getting upset, she’s getting upset, everyone is upset. It’s not a nice thing to be watching.”

John called on other farmers to be vigilant about security, citing thefts and other security breaches on farms around the country.

“Unfortunately it’s getting to the stage where we will have to be in ‘fortress farming’,” he said.

Read more

Arrest in Roscommon eviction incident