On the morning of 25th September while sabbing the Eggesford Hunt with our friends from South Devon Animal Rights near Coldridge, Devon we came across a distressed cow, visible from the road at Clotworthy Farm. Her legs were chained together to prevent her from doing the splits due to exhaustion and over-milking. Shockingly, this is standard practice in the UK. We found a farm worker who told us that she had milk fever (which is entirely preventable with proper diet management) and he would be seeing to her shortly.
We returned in the evening to check on her and found her in an even worse state. She was lying flat on her side, motionless and struggling to breathe. We tracked down the farmer, Richard Daw, and urged him to call a vet for her as she was clearly in a very bad way.
This video shows what happened next…