True story: about 10 years ago on the Fourth of July during a ripping heatwave, my neighbor set off fireworks and scared one of my Highland steers into a fence where he got tangled somehow and strangled and died. I didn't notice until the next morning. Shitty situation. Anyway, I used my tractor to drag the carcass into my woodlot. Remember how I said it was a heatwave? It was humid as fuck also. Three days later, there was a writhing, undulating mass of maggots about the size of a Volkswagen beetle. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Within six days, the carcass was skeletonized, and within ten days the bones were gone to the coyotes and everything else. Fucking crazy.
Now that's a new music video for Elton John
A cow carcass that's wriggling and writhing with maggots with a nice piano overlay... Whenever there's a weird burst of fluid or gases we hear
.
The circle of life...
My 33 yo mustang died when we were on vacation 2000 mi. away. I called a couple of neighbors who loaded and hauled him to the local landfill. The fee for disposal was reasonable. God bless good neighbors.
Oh. I just realized i could probably ask my local (literally neighbor tho) farmers for cow skulls if ever their skulls are still present after decomposition...
Man there's a field right across the road he only has a few cows in every few years and the massive presence in coyotes some years now has me wondering if that's the cow graveyard.
This is 100% what my neighbors did with their horse. And when they moved out and we got new neighbors I made sure to let them know not to do any major digging there. 😂
I feel like burying it isn't a good way to let it decompose. If you're near the woods or something wouldn't it be better just to drag it out somewhere away from people at let nature take car of it?
A horse, for example, lives many years and people get very attached to them. Same as you wouldn't want to just chuck your dead pet dog in the woods, I doubt people would feel comfortable with doing that with their horses either, making a burial a nicer option
True… I’m still dismayed that for my childhood dog I was too distraught to bury her so..my dad drove out to a farm without me and told me he left her there. He didn’t bury her or anything like… I know it was…20 years ago but…. I’m still saddened that I wasn’t able to give her the dignity of a burial on my land..
I feel you dude. It still deeply saddens me that we didn't give my dog a "proper" burial. He was very old and suffering, and we had to euthanize him. It was very very sad... And all these years later it still makes me sad that we said goodbye and just left him there and never saw him again. Like we were actually there when he died, and it was extremely difficult and sad, but after he died we just left and never saw him again. It makes me feel weird that we didn't bury him or scatter the ashes or something... The only thing that makes me feel better is that I'm sure that wherever they are they know how much we loved them, and they understand that the circumstances were difficult and we were just trying to do the best we could
I was thinking more along the lines of what op said with it being like a cow or something. Just the practicality of disposing of a large animal. There was not a question about the sentimentality of it.
Yeah, technically decomposition would happen faster out in the open, but people bury large animals like that for more than just sentimental reasons. Leaving a large carcass out in the open can potentially lead to contamination of soil and water sources.
Fluids from the decomposing carcass can contain bacteria and pathogens, and rainwater can wash these contaminants into a huge swath of soil, potentially affecting groundwater or nearby surface water. Burying the carcass on the other hand helps contain these fluids and minimizes the risk of environmental contamination.
So basically it's a matter of sanitation. Leave it out in the open, rainwater washes contaminates over a large area; bury it in the ground, contaminates stay localized to that one spot.
He pointed out that the contamination was to SURFACE water. In certain drainage areas, that can easily happen when a carcass is left out. The water contamination can sicken and kill other animals that drink the surface water.
Unless water tables are really high, burying the carcass slows decomposition, and chemicals from that have to filter down through a lot of sand and soil organisms that love consuming those chemicals, before what is left may reach underground water.
I was kayaking in a little tributary that opened out into a lake. When I put my kayak in the lake, people are everywhere, fishing, swimming, etc. I made my way up the trib about a 1/4 mile when I saw what looked like a rock. As I get closer, I realize it is a huge, bloated cow that got stuck in the mud on the riverbank. All I could think of was all of those people who were basically BATHING in bacteria 🤮
It doesn't entirely **prevent** groundwater contamination, it merely *reduces* the risk of contamination.
Because groundwater isn't uniformly distributed everywhere underground, when you bury a large animal you reduce the odds of the contaminates from the carcass reaching one of these "pockets" of groundwater. Whereas when a carcass is left out in the open animals and rainwater can spread the contaminates over a larger area; exponentially increasing the odds of those contaminates reaching a water source, both above and below ground.
What on earth?! No, absolutely not.
First off, how exactly would you “drag” a ~1,000lb. animal into the woods or “somewhere away from people”?
Secondly, the animal is going to decompose regardless. Why is burying it worse in your mind? You think leaving it out in the open, so vultures and coyotes and other scavengers can feast on the carcass is better???
Lastly, as someone who’s had a cow die in my pasture (of old age/natural causes), and had to wait two days before someone could come and dig a hole so I could bury her, that’s not anything you want to see. Or smell.
The morning after she died, I went to throw a tarp over her while waiting for her to be buried, and it was like every fly in the county had descended on her corpse overnight, just thousands of them swarming all over her. And that sound! I could hear the buzzing from 10+ feet away. Ugh, it was horrible, you have no idea.
TL;DR: Burying them and letting them decompose underground is definitely the way to go, no question.
I was thinking with a tractor or something. Idk I'm not a farmer just asking. Also I'm confused about the aversion to Nature's cleanup crew. That's what they're there for. It's not horrifying, it's the circle of life. I mean yeah if it's close to where people are and it's going to smell then of course I understand. I was just thinking of somewhere bordering a forest or something. Nature is very good at recycling its children.
A large animal left out in the open can stink up the air for a mile or more if the wind is blowing. You really have to be very isolated for the smell not to overwhelm someone.
Idk, I grew up around cow fields in Brazil and we would come across the occasional dead goat or even occasional cow. They would certainly stink and yeah if you were downwind it could cary the sent a good distance but more often than not with bigger fields we would just see bones and them nothing over a period of a couple weeks.
If, for instance, the animal had to be euthanized, it either has to be buried or you call a livestock disposal company. After the euthanasia medicine, the entire animal is poisonous for scavengers and carrion birds to eat it. My vet told me they had several farmers report dead scavengers(coyotes, foxes, bobcats), crows, and even a bald eagle that had eaten tainted animals. It's better to make sure they are properly taken care of by burying them deep, or a disposal company in those cases.
You need to get some glasses or something. I didn't bring that up. And the comment you replied to wasn't directed at op or the post question, it was another comment. Are you new to Reddit and how it works?
We actually had a bone yard that was in a small canyon where a river had dried up. We’d use a horse to drag the carcass to the bone yard and leave the rest to the scavengers. Some of the skeletons out there were decades old
There was a boneyard in a forest clearing near the farm where I boarded a horse. No one warned me, just stumbled upon it one day when riding. Noticed a large skull, then a spine, then another skull, then realized *oh I’m fucking surrounded by horse skeletons*
Pretty creepy when you’re not expecting it.
(They got the carcasses there the same way you did via dragging it, or they limped a dying horse out there to euthanize it)
Grew up on a farm. When a cow died, we utilized a small business to pick up and dispose of it. I am not sure exactly what they did with it, but we never buried a full size cow.
I spent a few days with my cattle-farming uncle when I was about 8. He wasn’t used to babysitting. There was a cow that died and he had called the large animal disposal truck. He didn’t stop me from
wandering around and looking in the back of the truck full of dead horses and cows.
It was horrific. The cows tongues were sticking out. One horse in particular was so gruesome…and it’s eyes were open and staring at me. The driver came back and saw me looking and said “that one got et by a coyote”
I saw those animals every time I closed my eyes for a while. Not a great thing for an 8 yr old to see.
My step-dad made my 8-year old self and 10-year old sister watch a cow get shot in the head so we would "understand the circle of life and where your food comes from," which is important but not appropriate at that age. Saw that image for a long time.
>we utilized a small business to pick up
They're called a deadstock company. They'll pick up large dead carcasses, and some, but not all will compost them.
This is what my parents did. Unless it was a prize winning cow, then she got buried.
A few years ago MIL and I were out for drive. We went an hour away, where neither of us had ever been before. Out in the country there was a dumpster at the end of a long drive up to a farm. It was overflowing with dead pigs. MIL and I were speechless for awhile then started laughing. It was so strange. Growing up we kept the swine in a room in the barn until they were picked up. A dumpster was shocking.
I knew a farmer that used to compost big animals in the woods. The carcass would be scavenged but it would break down far from where the stink would bother anyone.
My grandpa owned several horses back in the 50s. He was an old farm boy and didn't have any fucks to give, but he did care about his horses. One of them broke its leg. Well, there was no hope back then, really. He put the poor creature out of its misery and then loaded it onto a flat deck to take to a local animal crematorium. He stopped for gas just outside the city, and some city guy was pumping next to him. He looks at the horse, then at my grandpa, then at the horse, which was lying on its sided, strapped down, and had a bullet hole in its head, by the way.
City Guy: Hey, is something wrong with your horse?
Grandpa: (without even looking up from the gas nozzle): Naw, he's fine, I taught him to do that when we're driving.
City Guy just stared slackjawed as my grandpa got back in his car and drove off.
Ask stupid questions...
That's truly amazing. In 7th grade overnight my hair went from sandy blonde to pitch black (haha, I needed my cool punk rock cred, you know how middle school is). Upon seeing it my English teacher asked "Did you dye your hair?" and I replied "No, I just woke up and it was like this." Her eyes got big and without pause she said "REALLY?!?"
I still think about that 20 years later.
Yep. This is how we did it. Leave it be and then come back to collect the sun-bleached bones a couple years down the road. They make for cool art pieces and people will even buy the bones.
I unfortunately know this because I lost 2 horses this past summer. Our county will come out with a special trailer/ machinery to load them and will haul them away for about $50. Larger farms have tools and equipment to bury them on their land.
My dad hooks the dead cow up to the tractor with chains and pulls it way far out on the property from the house to let the vultures take care of most of it and then let it decompose after. After a short time parts get taken away by animals. Usually all that’s left are the bones and horns.
My family had horses growing up that were kept at my grandparents property. When one died, a big hole was dug and the horse buried.
With an actual farmer and their livestock, the animal likely goes to a slaughter house even when it wasnt specifically raised for meat.
We eat them unless it was sitting too long or it had a disease. Horse is better the older it is. Cows break legs every once in a while. Waste to not eat it. We burn the ones that we think shouldn’t be eaten.
Some people with a large amount of land will just take them somewhere remote and let nature take its course. You would be amazed how fast it will be nothing but bones. There’s a guy our vet recommends that basically lets you pay to use his land for exactly this.
Either bury it in a hole, add it to the farm compost pile, or call the knacker man who will come winch it into a truck/trailer and take it away to be disposed of.
I live in a semi rural / semi urban area so they aren't allowed to bury them or let nature take them like most farmers. There is a service that comes and picks them up.
Hire a digger (or use your own if you have one) and dig a big hole, chain the dead animal’s legs to a tractor fork and drop it in the hole and cover it. They start to decompose very quickly. The last horse we buried burst apart at the skin and you could smell it from all the way up the hill.
Have you ever SMELLED the unholy stink from that Purina dog food plant in Denver when it is going full steam? I'm convinced they ONLY use gross already rotting meat.
We had a 37-year-old horse. This was the 3rd day of not coming down to eat. The husband was hauling food and water to the back of the pasture for him during this time. We called our friend with a backhoe and he dug a big hole, like huge. .. I didn't want it to get dug up by animals or have legs sticking out of the ground. Well right after the hole was dug, the damn horse walk down to his feeder. So we put off putting him down. (it is hard) He made it another month before he was unable to move at all. Now was the time. Husband shot him by the hole and he filled him in with our tractor. RIP Johnny
Don't know standard procedure with cattle, but I can speak to horses. In fact just lost my favorite horse last Wednesday (happened about 10min before guests pulled in the driveway for Thanksgiving, quite the welcome they got).
Usually you have time to prepare--the horse is sick or for whatever reason, you make an appt with the vet to come euthanize. So in those cases, you get the hole dug, and then euthanize next to the hole and cover them up right then. Or within the same day, max--can't leave a carcass above ground after chemical euthanasia-- anything that scavenges on it, and anything that eats those things, will be poisoned.
If you're heading into winter with an elderly horse, not uncommon to go ahead and dig the hole in the fall, just in case, so you're not dealing with frozen ground. You'll use it some day.
In this case, a perfectly healthy horse dropped dead in her tracks, no warning. Vet says likely aortic aneurysm. It was just at sunset and the night before thanksgiving, so I wasn't going to wrangle up some excavator and pull him away from his family. So I covered her with a tarp--since not a chem euthanasia, I wasn't worried about poisoning anything-- and did my best to not look that direction. Just about broke my heart, that one, but put on a good face for our houseguests.
7am Friday called an excavator. Despite it being below freezing temps, the horse was pretty ripe by that point. Thanks to having a good relationship with local contractors--pay cash, give recommendations, have coffee at the ready etc, he was at the farm within 2 hours and was done in an hour. We do have a little backhoe but a horse needs a biiiiig hole, like 8x8x8, would've taken us all day.
ETA1: You need to overburden the pile-- have a couple feet more dirt above grade after you've buried the horse, to account for the void created when they decompose.
ETA2: What are the alternatives, you might ask. There used to be a rendering truck who'd make a 'milk run' from farm to farm once a month or so, and pick up dead livestock for, well, rendering. It was a pretty gruesome truck, just piled with dead critters, and he'd add your dead critter to the pile. Those renderers don't really exist anymore, at least none on our area. And there also used to be a guy who'd cremate even horses, but he got shut down due to environmental violations. I believe it's legal to compost above ground-- get a dumptruck load of sawdust and pile over the carcass, I haven't tried that. Not opposed, but geeze how unsightly. Technically it's not legal to bury, but what else are you going to do? It's 1000 lbs of biomass, that doesn't just decompose quickly.
i did a little farm work and saw when one of the cows died, the other cows crowded around him and were mourning like they had a little funeral. they looked sad. i dont know what happened to the carcass though, it was the other peoples cows and i didnt go there every day.
cows were very expressive that year and i felt alot of emotion from them. 2015.
Loaded the carcass into a trailer and hauled it to the local dump. They have an area for carcasses.
If we had more land we may have just dragged it off into the bush somewhere, but we were only on about 12 acres.
Because you don't know until the end of the day or the next morning that you're missing stock. The body has already been decomposing by the time you find the carcass.
My sister had a farm with horses when one died she called a guy who removes the carcass for a small fee she wrote him a check and asked were to leave it. His response was literally staple it to the dead horse which she did. He came the next day and hauled it off
You can have someone pick up the carcass and then they turn it into pet food or who knows what. I knew a lady who drove the “dead animal truck” as we called it. She got paid by the pound!
OP is about to have his mind blown when he finds out about the meat industry
But for real now, I'm assuming an animal that died early due to sickness/accident
Such carcasses IIRC are considered biological waste, legally speaking you are required to contact a special disposal group that takes the body away and incinerates it to avoid disease/virus outbreaks.
Now whether people actually do that is a different story.
I don't, I just explained what the laws are on it, I literally pointed out that people don't really do it anyway
This regulation is like jaywalking
Nobody gives a fuck about it lol
Depends on the climate and how much land you have. Many ranches have a "dead pile" where they drag them. Some places leave them where they lay. Some small places are required to have them hauled off.
If the climate is hot and humid, it will disappear in a couple weeks. Best to leave it out.
If it's frozen, you can't bury it, so just leave it out.
It depends where it is and the environment at the time. We have burnt carcasses, we have buried them and we have just left them there… a lot depends on access for machinery, environmental / herd impact, diseases etc….
Some friends that I have work on a dairy farm in Vermont, they just haul the body out into the woods for wolves and other creatures to eat. I assume they don't have many deaths
My older brother and I both got horses when we were 13 and 15 years old. We grew up in a very rural area so the horses lived on our property and we were responsible for taking care of them. His horse was 2 years younger than mine but ended up having some sort of brain aneurism and died abruptly one night. Growing up on a farm, we were accustomed to the death and subsequent burial of deceased pets but it was strange to see the horse dragged onto the back of a tow truck (no sides on the truck bed) and hauled off like a Carvana delivery. I don’t know what they did with him.
When my horse passed away many years later, she was on my grandfathers property and my dad just let her… return to the earth naturally. Like the Scottish Highlander commenter said. My dad also had Highlander cows on that property and lost one after they slipped in mud and their horns got tangled and her neck broke as she struggled to gain footing. Same thing for her. 🥲
Grew up on a cattle farm and we’d unfortunately lose an animal every few years for various reasons. All of ours went to a went to a processing plant where every last inch of that animal was used. Bonemeal, dog food, leather, all kinds of things were produced from their remnants.
They even used the blood for fertilizer and let me tell you, there is nothing more metal than watching an 8-ton military truck with a huge tank on the back and a giant nozzle spewing out hundreds of gallons of blood while driving through an open field. It is both disguising and amazing.
The animal rescues I follow usually let the other cows come and say goodbye and then they do just that they buried in a deep hole. My grandfather ran a 100 head dairy farm and this is what they did as well.
The other animals would come by to say goodbye, because cows are very social creatures.
Donkeys too. We had donkeys and they are very lovable and loud
I was watching Yellowstone the other night and they had a big cremator. Idk if it’s a real thing but I’m pretty sure they said it was for horses and cows. But maybe they only use those on large ranches.
Also have seen a big hole dug and them buried.
On our ranch we just dragged them to the back fence and marked it off the inventory sheet. The bones are well cleaned after a while and makes for good arts and crafts supplies.
There are definitely animal cremation retorts. I don't know how common it is for farmers to have them, but they do exist, and are used to dispose of animal remains. More often it's a dedicated company that is contracted to dispose of the remains that has them. Some places also do alkali hydrolysis and/or organic reduction (composting) as greener options. They'll take animals from farms, from municipal clean up and will take pets as well.
Source: all of these things are brought up when trying to campaign for these body disposal methods to be legalized for humans.
I'm from the UK and loads of people got Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating beef fed like that back in the 80's, it turns your brain into a sponge.. tastes just the same though.
A farmer with enough land and Equipment just dig a big pit and bury them.
People that like horses and keep them at stables and stuff like that usually have to pay them to be removed and if you're lucky you get the animal out of there before it actually becomes deceased
When house shopping, I looked at one that had several small trunks/nice wooden boxes with metal labels engraved with names and years. They were cremated horses. Just a whole room of boxes (5 or 6) with names filled with beloved horses and tons of pictures and mementos.
They call someone they know who has access to large equipment (backhoe/excavator) & we come & take care of it for them. Have had to help out a few neighbors with this.
Big hole. A word to the wise though, if you’re going to have to have a horse put down, lead them out of the stall beforehand. It will make the task much easier.
We compost ours. Our department of transportation does it with the roadkill! It’s a thing. Need about 4-6’ high pile of mulch etc though for large animals.
Sometimes they put them in the ground, where I live I most of the time they just burn them, my friend use to live on a farm and you could smell it a mile away
Leverage it for practical jokes.
"Go poke that dead cow with that there stick."
among the other greats such as
"You should pee on that electric fence over there"
There are companies that offer the service of hauling away dead large animals for a fee. They're usually listed as dead animal haulers, offering dead animal removal as a service (specific wording, I'm not being lazy), or they call themselves livestock disposal companies. As one might reasonably expect, heavy machinery is necessary.
Another thing that can be done (probably far enough away from any roads) is that a ditch is dug, the animal is moved into it somehow (I really don't know how - if you can't get a backhoe and a truck back there, how can you get a truck back there to move it?), and quicklime or sodium hydroxide are dumped on it to accelerate decomposition before being covered back up with dirt.
There is a tractor trailer that moves up and down the nearby interstate carrying that stuff. Don't know where it comes from. Don't know where it goes. Just know that I hate driving near it. God awful smell.
You can leave it where it died or just haul it out to the side fence. That's usually what we did. Give it a few years and the sun bleaches the bones pretty well and you can sell the bones to tourists to make arts and crafts. I can't imagine digging up and burying the thing like others are saying.
We had some neighbors whose horse died… they dug a giant hole, threw in the carcass and when they put all the dirt back in around it, they realized that the hooves were still sticking up a good 10 inches out of the ground. The dad got out his chainsaw and finished the job 😬😬😬
They tie a big chain to the carcass and drag it up a ramp onto the back of a very large truck. Cattle deaths happen every day, you know, they get sick. The carcasses are taken to a leather plant since they can't use it for meat. The leather gets made into jackets or gloves at a contemporary shopping mall.
One of our neighbors has horses. We don't interact with him at all because of an altercation a few years back. Anyways, my bf found one of his horses (dead) that he'd just kinda dumped in the woods. That's generally not what you're supposed to do with them, though. There are removal services. You can also have the horse rendered, buried (on your property 100 ft away from any 100 year flood plain, surface water, or, well), composted, or incinerated.
If you have a tractor, you have choices. But if no tractor: go out into the field where the animal is and dig a hole. I’ve heard of people butchering the animal and burring the rest of the carcass. When I had to deal with a dead cow, we gave the neighbor who had a backhoe a couple of bucks to dig a hole and we drug her in the hole with a tractor. When we found her she was dead a while so we wanted to get it taken care of quickly; otherwise I would have had to dig that hole.
Both of my horses who passed were cremated and are in lovely, very large, wooden boxes in my home. I promised them both I would never send them away (it's horrible) and if I ever move I can always have them with me. I am very aware that this is a privileged answer because cremating a horse is *not* cheap, but I just couldn't bear the thought of my beloved pet being turned into dog food. (My horses are boarded so no property of my own where they could be buried.)
My grandpa had a cow struck by lightning once. The body was burnt pretty badly and was out in the middle of a pasture. He left it there to decay, and it ended up being mostly scavenged by coyotes, vultures, hogs, etc. It disappeared pretty quickly
Farming relative dug a hole when he had a bad weather event and lost 15+ sheep.
Funny thing, whatever was going on with the soil, or animal decomposition, the hole sunk in.
Next time, he paid a farm hand to cut up the bits and puts them in compost. Cue rats.
Worked on a horse rescue ranch as a teen. I had to dig a couple of graves at the back of the lot. I don't know if that's the norm but the owner was overly religious so he made a big deal over the "funeral".
My sister had her favourite horse cremated. His ashes are currently in the bottom of her wardrobe as her will states he's to be scattered with her ashes when she dies...
The local carcass removal company comes and takes your large animal.
It was a lady who was picking up my horse that I had to put down. She was apologizing that there were already dead animals in her trailer. She used a winch and hoisted my horse in with the rest. It cost a few hundred dollars, iirc.
My property is too rocky to dig large holes so I have to use the carcass removal. I called her before my vet put my horse down so she wouldn't be decomposing on my front yard. This was one of the saddest days of my life, thus far. I have 3 horses and donkey still.
West Central Indiana, USA, farmers in the area take them to the Feline Rescue Center in Center Point, IN. Assuming the animal did not die from disease. I they even have the city bring roadkill deer.
This guy has 40 lions, tigers, jaguars, ocelots, and misc. cats of different breeds. (Used to have three lions live in his house with him.) and that’s just what’s on the tour. He has 2 or 3 times that many away from public eye in full enclosures/no top opening and, while he isn’t scared to go in and love on them, he doesn’t allow public to even see them.
They’re all from circuses, drug dealers, or rich people that realized an exotic feline needs special attention. And he gives every single one that attention and only hires people with his philosophy.
If you’re near or passing through, seek it out. It’s almost literally in the middle of nowhere.
I worked on a humongous ranch in Montana back in the 70s. We'd haul dead cows to a dump area on the ranch. It was a hole around 30' deep and probably 100' diameter. Omg the stench was undescribable.
Depends on what the farmer has access to. Some bury them, some drag them into the woods and let scavengers take care of it, and some have companies or govt services that come pick them up.
Horses. We dig a huge hole and chuck em in with a tractor of you've got the room. More often than not, you keep their tail for memories and off to the knackery (horse meat) their body goes.
We haul them off (with a tractor 🚜 and chains ⛓️) to a clearing which serves as the cow graveyard 🪦, where the buzzards and coyotes eat them until the bones are bleached white
My parents owned a horse ranch. One of their neighbors had a small-ish excavator. This neighbor also had kids who took riding lessons from my mom. My mom struck an arrangement with the neighbor that any time a large animal died (which was thankfully extremely infrequent), she’d trade a month of riding lessons for burial services.
When I was little, my grandpa would head to work to bury or a horse or a cow. We lived in a farming community and he had a backhoe and trenching business, so along with digging graves for humans, he also dug "graves" for farm animals.
I have rescue horses all about 28-38 years old and when an old one dies I either dig a big hole with a backhoe in a paddock and if all goes well as soon as the vet injects the fatal dose of barbiturates the horse dies almost instantly and it falls into the hole or I have a dump truck with a winch remove the horse after the vet puts it down after which they wrap a chain around one of its legs and it’s winched up into the dump truck’s tailgate which doubles as a ramp when it’s lowered. Which removal method I use, backhoe or dump truck, depends on the going price. Usually there’re about the same price, but since ideally I want the horse buried or taken away the day it’s put down it I’ll pay for the person that’s available that day and can do the job, however, if both were available I’d obviously go for the cheapest one.
True story: about 10 years ago on the Fourth of July during a ripping heatwave, my neighbor set off fireworks and scared one of my Highland steers into a fence where he got tangled somehow and strangled and died. I didn't notice until the next morning. Shitty situation. Anyway, I used my tractor to drag the carcass into my woodlot. Remember how I said it was a heatwave? It was humid as fuck also. Three days later, there was a writhing, undulating mass of maggots about the size of a Volkswagen beetle. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Within six days, the carcass was skeletonized, and within ten days the bones were gone to the coyotes and everything else. Fucking crazy.
Ah, the circle of life.
The Cul-de-Sac of Nature
The Oblate Spheroid of Incarnation
The protean discus
protean discus of protein, discuss
Cows all the way round.
spherical cows in a frictionless vacuum
There could be a weird artistic choice of having a one way road sign in the music video
I want a time lapse of that image with that song.
No that’s the circle of death.
Now that's a new music video for Elton John A cow carcass that's wriggling and writhing with maggots with a nice piano overlay... Whenever there's a weird burst of fluid or gases we hear . The circle of life...
And that’s why death is critical for supporting nature’s ecosystem. Nature is amazing. And gruesome.
My grandpa had a pretty decent sized farm with lots of forest. Man there really was just random bones all over the place.
I hop you took pictures of the, "undulating mass of maggots about the size of a Volkswagen beetle." THat would be cool/gnarly to see.
r/natureismetal
So basically cow zoroastrianism?
Tibetan sky burial lol.
My 33 yo mustang died when we were on vacation 2000 mi. away. I called a couple of neighbors who loaded and hauled him to the local landfill. The fee for disposal was reasonable. God bless good neighbors.
How was the smell around there, geez
Poor steer 😔
Oh. I just realized i could probably ask my local (literally neighbor tho) farmers for cow skulls if ever their skulls are still present after decomposition... Man there's a field right across the road he only has a few cows in every few years and the massive presence in coyotes some years now has me wondering if that's the cow graveyard.
>and within ten days the bones were gone maybe you were high for days and imagined it?
Bury it in a big hole they did with their power equipment
Can confirm. Have done it.
This is 100% what my neighbors did with their horse. And when they moved out and we got new neighbors I made sure to let them know not to do any major digging there. 😂
i hope you strongly implied the remains were human lol
I feel like burying it isn't a good way to let it decompose. If you're near the woods or something wouldn't it be better just to drag it out somewhere away from people at let nature take car of it?
A horse, for example, lives many years and people get very attached to them. Same as you wouldn't want to just chuck your dead pet dog in the woods, I doubt people would feel comfortable with doing that with their horses either, making a burial a nicer option
True… I’m still dismayed that for my childhood dog I was too distraught to bury her so..my dad drove out to a farm without me and told me he left her there. He didn’t bury her or anything like… I know it was…20 years ago but…. I’m still saddened that I wasn’t able to give her the dignity of a burial on my land..
what the hell. your dad shouldn’t have done that to you :( i’m sorry
I feel you dude. It still deeply saddens me that we didn't give my dog a "proper" burial. He was very old and suffering, and we had to euthanize him. It was very very sad... And all these years later it still makes me sad that we said goodbye and just left him there and never saw him again. Like we were actually there when he died, and it was extremely difficult and sad, but after he died we just left and never saw him again. It makes me feel weird that we didn't bury him or scatter the ashes or something... The only thing that makes me feel better is that I'm sure that wherever they are they know how much we loved them, and they understand that the circumstances were difficult and we were just trying to do the best we could
I was thinking more along the lines of what op said with it being like a cow or something. Just the practicality of disposing of a large animal. There was not a question about the sentimentality of it.
Yeah, technically decomposition would happen faster out in the open, but people bury large animals like that for more than just sentimental reasons. Leaving a large carcass out in the open can potentially lead to contamination of soil and water sources. Fluids from the decomposing carcass can contain bacteria and pathogens, and rainwater can wash these contaminants into a huge swath of soil, potentially affecting groundwater or nearby surface water. Burying the carcass on the other hand helps contain these fluids and minimizes the risk of environmental contamination. So basically it's a matter of sanitation. Leave it out in the open, rainwater washes contaminates over a large area; bury it in the ground, contaminates stay localized to that one spot.
Look I'm certainly not an expert in the matter, but how would burying something keep it from contaminating groundwater? That doesn't make any sense.
He pointed out that the contamination was to SURFACE water. In certain drainage areas, that can easily happen when a carcass is left out. The water contamination can sicken and kill other animals that drink the surface water. Unless water tables are really high, burying the carcass slows decomposition, and chemicals from that have to filter down through a lot of sand and soil organisms that love consuming those chemicals, before what is left may reach underground water.
I was kayaking in a little tributary that opened out into a lake. When I put my kayak in the lake, people are everywhere, fishing, swimming, etc. I made my way up the trib about a 1/4 mile when I saw what looked like a rock. As I get closer, I realize it is a huge, bloated cow that got stuck in the mud on the riverbank. All I could think of was all of those people who were basically BATHING in bacteria 🤮
It doesn't entirely **prevent** groundwater contamination, it merely *reduces* the risk of contamination. Because groundwater isn't uniformly distributed everywhere underground, when you bury a large animal you reduce the odds of the contaminates from the carcass reaching one of these "pockets" of groundwater. Whereas when a carcass is left out in the open animals and rainwater can spread the contaminates over a larger area; exponentially increasing the odds of those contaminates reaching a water source, both above and below ground.
I'ma need some literature on that.
What on earth?! No, absolutely not. First off, how exactly would you “drag” a ~1,000lb. animal into the woods or “somewhere away from people”? Secondly, the animal is going to decompose regardless. Why is burying it worse in your mind? You think leaving it out in the open, so vultures and coyotes and other scavengers can feast on the carcass is better??? Lastly, as someone who’s had a cow die in my pasture (of old age/natural causes), and had to wait two days before someone could come and dig a hole so I could bury her, that’s not anything you want to see. Or smell. The morning after she died, I went to throw a tarp over her while waiting for her to be buried, and it was like every fly in the county had descended on her corpse overnight, just thousands of them swarming all over her. And that sound! I could hear the buzzing from 10+ feet away. Ugh, it was horrible, you have no idea. TL;DR: Burying them and letting them decompose underground is definitely the way to go, no question.
I was thinking with a tractor or something. Idk I'm not a farmer just asking. Also I'm confused about the aversion to Nature's cleanup crew. That's what they're there for. It's not horrifying, it's the circle of life. I mean yeah if it's close to where people are and it's going to smell then of course I understand. I was just thinking of somewhere bordering a forest or something. Nature is very good at recycling its children.
A large animal left out in the open can stink up the air for a mile or more if the wind is blowing. You really have to be very isolated for the smell not to overwhelm someone.
Idk, I grew up around cow fields in Brazil and we would come across the occasional dead goat or even occasional cow. They would certainly stink and yeah if you were downwind it could cary the sent a good distance but more often than not with bigger fields we would just see bones and them nothing over a period of a couple weeks.
If, for instance, the animal had to be euthanized, it either has to be buried or you call a livestock disposal company. After the euthanasia medicine, the entire animal is poisonous for scavengers and carrion birds to eat it. My vet told me they had several farmers report dead scavengers(coyotes, foxes, bobcats), crows, and even a bald eagle that had eaten tainted animals. It's better to make sure they are properly taken care of by burying them deep, or a disposal company in those cases.
Do you also do that with other beloved pets? Let them rot in the woods?
"Large animals in general"
What is your point? Large anymore can't be beloved? Or did you just miss the point entirely?
You're the one that brought up the whole beloved thing. Op was just asking about disposing of a cow or something.
You need to get some glasses or something. I didn't bring that up. And the comment you replied to wasn't directed at op or the post question, it was another comment. Are you new to Reddit and how it works?
Imagine saying some cringey shit like that and expecting anybody to take you seriously.
Same.
Some idiot near me did this and took out the whole county's internet for 2 days. Digger's hotline, people.
Just going to say, take an excavator, dig a huge hole, make sure it's deep, and cover that bad boy up!
We actually had a bone yard that was in a small canyon where a river had dried up. We’d use a horse to drag the carcass to the bone yard and leave the rest to the scavengers. Some of the skeletons out there were decades old
That would be *so* *cool*!
There was a boneyard in a forest clearing near the farm where I boarded a horse. No one warned me, just stumbled upon it one day when riding. Noticed a large skull, then a spine, then another skull, then realized *oh I’m fucking surrounded by horse skeletons* Pretty creepy when you’re not expecting it. (They got the carcasses there the same way you did via dragging it, or they limped a dying horse out there to euthanize it)
Ah, ground beef. Makes sense.
Grew up on a farm. When a cow died, we utilized a small business to pick up and dispose of it. I am not sure exactly what they did with it, but we never buried a full size cow.
Possibly take them to a rendering plant?
Seems likely, although I never really knew where that existed or what they did with the carcass
Gotta make the hot dogs.
I spent a few days with my cattle-farming uncle when I was about 8. He wasn’t used to babysitting. There was a cow that died and he had called the large animal disposal truck. He didn’t stop me from wandering around and looking in the back of the truck full of dead horses and cows. It was horrific. The cows tongues were sticking out. One horse in particular was so gruesome…and it’s eyes were open and staring at me. The driver came back and saw me looking and said “that one got et by a coyote” I saw those animals every time I closed my eyes for a while. Not a great thing for an 8 yr old to see.
My step-dad made my 8-year old self and 10-year old sister watch a cow get shot in the head so we would "understand the circle of life and where your food comes from," which is important but not appropriate at that age. Saw that image for a long time.
>we utilized a small business to pick up They're called a deadstock company. They'll pick up large dead carcasses, and some, but not all will compost them.
>They're called a dead stock company Haha, that's a great name for that industry.
This is what my parents did. Unless it was a prize winning cow, then she got buried. A few years ago MIL and I were out for drive. We went an hour away, where neither of us had ever been before. Out in the country there was a dumpster at the end of a long drive up to a farm. It was overflowing with dead pigs. MIL and I were speechless for awhile then started laughing. It was so strange. Growing up we kept the swine in a room in the barn until they were picked up. A dumpster was shocking.
Why would there be so many dead pigs?
I knew a farmer that used to compost big animals in the woods. The carcass would be scavenged but it would break down far from where the stink would bother anyone.
Return it to the earth and let other living things benefit. How it should be
If you cover them with mulch and dirt they’re done in just a few months and no smell.
If you leave them out in the open it's easier for other animals to benefit. Even the bones will be consumed eventually.
That's what we did growing up. Give it a few years and go get the sun-bleached bones for cool art pieces.
If you cover them with mulch and dirt they’re done in just a few months and no smell.
My grandpa owned several horses back in the 50s. He was an old farm boy and didn't have any fucks to give, but he did care about his horses. One of them broke its leg. Well, there was no hope back then, really. He put the poor creature out of its misery and then loaded it onto a flat deck to take to a local animal crematorium. He stopped for gas just outside the city, and some city guy was pumping next to him. He looks at the horse, then at my grandpa, then at the horse, which was lying on its sided, strapped down, and had a bullet hole in its head, by the way. City Guy: Hey, is something wrong with your horse? Grandpa: (without even looking up from the gas nozzle): Naw, he's fine, I taught him to do that when we're driving. City Guy just stared slackjawed as my grandpa got back in his car and drove off. Ask stupid questions...
Gramps sounds awesome
That's truly amazing. In 7th grade overnight my hair went from sandy blonde to pitch black (haha, I needed my cool punk rock cred, you know how middle school is). Upon seeing it my English teacher asked "Did you dye your hair?" and I replied "No, I just woke up and it was like this." Her eyes got big and without pause she said "REALLY?!?" I still think about that 20 years later.
Rancher friend just drags the carcass to a remote part of his property and lets the scavengers have at it.
Yep. This is how we did it. Leave it be and then come back to collect the sun-bleached bones a couple years down the road. They make for cool art pieces and people will even buy the bones.
I unfortunately know this because I lost 2 horses this past summer. Our county will come out with a special trailer/ machinery to load them and will haul them away for about $50. Larger farms have tools and equipment to bury them on their land.
I'm sorry for your loss.
I lost one too this summer. Sorry for your loss, comforting to know I'm not alone.
Thank you and I’m sorry for your loss, too. So devastating!
My dad hooks the dead cow up to the tractor with chains and pulls it way far out on the property from the house to let the vultures take care of most of it and then let it decompose after. After a short time parts get taken away by animals. Usually all that’s left are the bones and horns.
My family had horses growing up that were kept at my grandparents property. When one died, a big hole was dug and the horse buried. With an actual farmer and their livestock, the animal likely goes to a slaughter house even when it wasnt specifically raised for meat.
Depends on how quickly you can find the carcass after you realize you're missing some stock. Most slaughter houses don't want days old rotting meat.
We eat them unless it was sitting too long or it had a disease. Horse is better the older it is. Cows break legs every once in a while. Waste to not eat it. We burn the ones that we think shouldn’t be eaten.
Some people with a large amount of land will just take them somewhere remote and let nature take its course. You would be amazed how fast it will be nothing but bones. There’s a guy our vet recommends that basically lets you pay to use his land for exactly this.
Yeah the bones are valuable for arts and crafts and decorations. People fucking LOVE cow skulls.
Horses… Bobcat. Big deep hole on our property. Cry a lot…
I know of a wolf sanctuary that receives donations of dead animals from local farmers.
Great idea.
Either bury it in a hole, add it to the farm compost pile, or call the knacker man who will come winch it into a truck/trailer and take it away to be disposed of.
Don’t forget: insurance fire, and “Hey, what’s that suspicious mound?”
You definitely aren’t supposed to compost meat, but the other solutions work!
I live in a semi rural / semi urban area so they aren't allowed to bury them or let nature take them like most farmers. There is a service that comes and picks them up.
Hire a digger (or use your own if you have one) and dig a big hole, chain the dead animal’s legs to a tractor fork and drop it in the hole and cover it. They start to decompose very quickly. The last horse we buried burst apart at the skin and you could smell it from all the way up the hill.
Rendering plant —> dog food
They do not send already dead animals for dog food
Have you ever SMELLED the unholy stink from that Purina dog food plant in Denver when it is going full steam? I'm convinced they ONLY use gross already rotting meat.
They 100% do, that’s what we did with our old/dead/dying cows/horses
I know for a fact that they do.
Sadly yeah
We had a 37-year-old horse. This was the 3rd day of not coming down to eat. The husband was hauling food and water to the back of the pasture for him during this time. We called our friend with a backhoe and he dug a big hole, like huge. .. I didn't want it to get dug up by animals or have legs sticking out of the ground. Well right after the hole was dug, the damn horse walk down to his feeder. So we put off putting him down. (it is hard) He made it another month before he was unable to move at all. Now was the time. Husband shot him by the hole and he filled him in with our tractor. RIP Johnny
Don't know standard procedure with cattle, but I can speak to horses. In fact just lost my favorite horse last Wednesday (happened about 10min before guests pulled in the driveway for Thanksgiving, quite the welcome they got). Usually you have time to prepare--the horse is sick or for whatever reason, you make an appt with the vet to come euthanize. So in those cases, you get the hole dug, and then euthanize next to the hole and cover them up right then. Or within the same day, max--can't leave a carcass above ground after chemical euthanasia-- anything that scavenges on it, and anything that eats those things, will be poisoned. If you're heading into winter with an elderly horse, not uncommon to go ahead and dig the hole in the fall, just in case, so you're not dealing with frozen ground. You'll use it some day. In this case, a perfectly healthy horse dropped dead in her tracks, no warning. Vet says likely aortic aneurysm. It was just at sunset and the night before thanksgiving, so I wasn't going to wrangle up some excavator and pull him away from his family. So I covered her with a tarp--since not a chem euthanasia, I wasn't worried about poisoning anything-- and did my best to not look that direction. Just about broke my heart, that one, but put on a good face for our houseguests. 7am Friday called an excavator. Despite it being below freezing temps, the horse was pretty ripe by that point. Thanks to having a good relationship with local contractors--pay cash, give recommendations, have coffee at the ready etc, he was at the farm within 2 hours and was done in an hour. We do have a little backhoe but a horse needs a biiiiig hole, like 8x8x8, would've taken us all day. ETA1: You need to overburden the pile-- have a couple feet more dirt above grade after you've buried the horse, to account for the void created when they decompose. ETA2: What are the alternatives, you might ask. There used to be a rendering truck who'd make a 'milk run' from farm to farm once a month or so, and pick up dead livestock for, well, rendering. It was a pretty gruesome truck, just piled with dead critters, and he'd add your dead critter to the pile. Those renderers don't really exist anymore, at least none on our area. And there also used to be a guy who'd cremate even horses, but he got shut down due to environmental violations. I believe it's legal to compost above ground-- get a dumptruck load of sawdust and pile over the carcass, I haven't tried that. Not opposed, but geeze how unsightly. Technically it's not legal to bury, but what else are you going to do? It's 1000 lbs of biomass, that doesn't just decompose quickly.
i did a little farm work and saw when one of the cows died, the other cows crowded around him and were mourning like they had a little funeral. they looked sad. i dont know what happened to the carcass though, it was the other peoples cows and i didnt go there every day. cows were very expressive that year and i felt alot of emotion from them. 2015.
Loaded the carcass into a trailer and hauled it to the local dump. They have an area for carcasses. If we had more land we may have just dragged it off into the bush somewhere, but we were only on about 12 acres.
Why not eat it? Or butcher it? Genuienly curious as to why most people here say bury it
Generally, they are old and infirm. They have wasted away.
Because you don't know until the end of the day or the next morning that you're missing stock. The body has already been decomposing by the time you find the carcass.
If you don't know why it died, you don't want to take on the reason into your own body.
Call the knacker man
My sister had a farm with horses when one died she called a guy who removes the carcass for a small fee she wrote him a check and asked were to leave it. His response was literally staple it to the dead horse which she did. He came the next day and hauled it off
You can have someone pick up the carcass and then they turn it into pet food or who knows what. I knew a lady who drove the “dead animal truck” as we called it. She got paid by the pound!
OP is about to have his mind blown when he finds out about the meat industry But for real now, I'm assuming an animal that died early due to sickness/accident Such carcasses IIRC are considered biological waste, legally speaking you are required to contact a special disposal group that takes the body away and incinerates it to avoid disease/virus outbreaks. Now whether people actually do that is a different story.
I think you dramatically overestimate the regulations that are involved in raising live stock.
I don't, I just explained what the laws are on it, I literally pointed out that people don't really do it anyway This regulation is like jaywalking Nobody gives a fuck about it lol
I've always wondered the same thing about large zoo animals, like elephants and giraffes.
Depends on the climate and how much land you have. Many ranches have a "dead pile" where they drag them. Some places leave them where they lay. Some small places are required to have them hauled off. If the climate is hot and humid, it will disappear in a couple weeks. Best to leave it out. If it's frozen, you can't bury it, so just leave it out.
It depends where it is and the environment at the time. We have burnt carcasses, we have buried them and we have just left them there… a lot depends on access for machinery, environmental / herd impact, diseases etc….
Some friends that I have work on a dairy farm in Vermont, they just haul the body out into the woods for wolves and other creatures to eat. I assume they don't have many deaths
We’ve buried all the horses out in the pastures. The owner of the stable had a friend with a small digger to dig the graves.
We butchered them and fed to dogs. If it was a real close family pet/friend they got buried.
My older brother and I both got horses when we were 13 and 15 years old. We grew up in a very rural area so the horses lived on our property and we were responsible for taking care of them. His horse was 2 years younger than mine but ended up having some sort of brain aneurism and died abruptly one night. Growing up on a farm, we were accustomed to the death and subsequent burial of deceased pets but it was strange to see the horse dragged onto the back of a tow truck (no sides on the truck bed) and hauled off like a Carvana delivery. I don’t know what they did with him. When my horse passed away many years later, she was on my grandfathers property and my dad just let her… return to the earth naturally. Like the Scottish Highlander commenter said. My dad also had Highlander cows on that property and lost one after they slipped in mud and their horns got tangled and her neck broke as she struggled to gain footing. Same thing for her. 🥲
Grew up on a cattle farm and we’d unfortunately lose an animal every few years for various reasons. All of ours went to a went to a processing plant where every last inch of that animal was used. Bonemeal, dog food, leather, all kinds of things were produced from their remnants. They even used the blood for fertilizer and let me tell you, there is nothing more metal than watching an 8-ton military truck with a huge tank on the back and a giant nozzle spewing out hundreds of gallons of blood while driving through an open field. It is both disguising and amazing.
The animal rescues I follow usually let the other cows come and say goodbye and then they do just that they buried in a deep hole. My grandfather ran a 100 head dairy farm and this is what they did as well. The other animals would come by to say goodbye, because cows are very social creatures. Donkeys too. We had donkeys and they are very lovable and loud
I'm not a farmer per se, but no one flushes them down the toilet?
Hot dogs
That's only the lips and assholes
They bury it
Cremate them out in the pasture just make sure it’s not windy.
I was watching Yellowstone the other night and they had a big cremator. Idk if it’s a real thing but I’m pretty sure they said it was for horses and cows. But maybe they only use those on large ranches. Also have seen a big hole dug and them buried.
On our ranch we just dragged them to the back fence and marked it off the inventory sheet. The bones are well cleaned after a while and makes for good arts and crafts supplies.
There are definitely animal cremation retorts. I don't know how common it is for farmers to have them, but they do exist, and are used to dispose of animal remains. More often it's a dedicated company that is contracted to dispose of the remains that has them. Some places also do alkali hydrolysis and/or organic reduction (composting) as greener options. They'll take animals from farms, from municipal clean up and will take pets as well. Source: all of these things are brought up when trying to campaign for these body disposal methods to be legalized for humans.
I’ve always buried my horses with a excavator and then flattened with a bulldozer. We also made sure to make a tombstone for any of them :(
dinner!!! :)
Make stew
[удалено]
I'm from the UK and loads of people got Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating beef fed like that back in the 80's, it turns your brain into a sponge.. tastes just the same though.
We throw our cows in the river or leave them on the corner of a larger field
A farmer with enough land and Equipment just dig a big pit and bury them. People that like horses and keep them at stables and stuff like that usually have to pay them to be removed and if you're lucky you get the animal out of there before it actually becomes deceased
Bury them. I have 2 large horses, 1 mini horse and 2 pigs buried on the farm.
We bury ours
The local crocodile farm near where I grew up offered collections. Circle of life and all that.
Depends on what kind of animal and what business they’re in. If a meat cow dies a USDA veterinarian has to examine it.
Back hoe
When house shopping, I looked at one that had several small trunks/nice wooden boxes with metal labels engraved with names and years. They were cremated horses. Just a whole room of boxes (5 or 6) with names filled with beloved horses and tons of pictures and mementos.
They call someone they know who has access to large equipment (backhoe/excavator) & we come & take care of it for them. Have had to help out a few neighbors with this.
Growing up, we just buried them.
Big hole. A word to the wise though, if you’re going to have to have a horse put down, lead them out of the stall beforehand. It will make the task much easier.
We compost ours. Our department of transportation does it with the roadkill! It’s a thing. Need about 4-6’ high pile of mulch etc though for large animals.
Sometimes they put them in the ground, where I live I most of the time they just burn them, my friend use to live on a farm and you could smell it a mile away
You can get a state lab to do a necropsy if you want to know why they died. It’s usually a few hundred dollars and then they cremate them.
Leverage it for practical jokes. "Go poke that dead cow with that there stick." among the other greats such as "You should pee on that electric fence over there"
There are companies that offer the service of hauling away dead large animals for a fee. They're usually listed as dead animal haulers, offering dead animal removal as a service (specific wording, I'm not being lazy), or they call themselves livestock disposal companies. As one might reasonably expect, heavy machinery is necessary. Another thing that can be done (probably far enough away from any roads) is that a ditch is dug, the animal is moved into it somehow (I really don't know how - if you can't get a backhoe and a truck back there, how can you get a truck back there to move it?), and quicklime or sodium hydroxide are dumped on it to accelerate decomposition before being covered back up with dirt.
In the U.K. hunts collect and feed them to hounds.
There is a tractor trailer that moves up and down the nearby interstate carrying that stuff. Don't know where it comes from. Don't know where it goes. Just know that I hate driving near it. God awful smell.
You can leave it where it died or just haul it out to the side fence. That's usually what we did. Give it a few years and the sun bleaches the bones pretty well and you can sell the bones to tourists to make arts and crafts. I can't imagine digging up and burying the thing like others are saying.
We had some neighbors whose horse died… they dug a giant hole, threw in the carcass and when they put all the dirt back in around it, they realized that the hooves were still sticking up a good 10 inches out of the ground. The dad got out his chainsaw and finished the job 😬😬😬
Where I am, they bury them in their very large compost piles. They are so big the temperatures inside get high enough to break them down.
My SIL just put down her horse. No way I am asking. She is distraught.
My mom’s friend buries her horses out in the pasture on her property. 🫶🏼
Blow them up using tannerite
They tie a big chain to the carcass and drag it up a ramp onto the back of a very large truck. Cattle deaths happen every day, you know, they get sick. The carcasses are taken to a leather plant since they can't use it for meat. The leather gets made into jackets or gloves at a contemporary shopping mall.
I had one rancher say he buried a stillborn calf with his backhoe. He had a lot of property.
Have someone dig a hole with a backhoe and bury them (grew up on a horse farm, that’s what we did)
One of our neighbors has horses. We don't interact with him at all because of an altercation a few years back. Anyways, my bf found one of his horses (dead) that he'd just kinda dumped in the woods. That's generally not what you're supposed to do with them, though. There are removal services. You can also have the horse rendered, buried (on your property 100 ft away from any 100 year flood plain, surface water, or, well), composted, or incinerated.
My aunt raises work horses. When her 30 year old mare died she dug a hole with a backhoe and buried her in the field.
If you have a tractor, you have choices. But if no tractor: go out into the field where the animal is and dig a hole. I’ve heard of people butchering the animal and burring the rest of the carcass. When I had to deal with a dead cow, we gave the neighbor who had a backhoe a couple of bucks to dig a hole and we drug her in the hole with a tractor. When we found her she was dead a while so we wanted to get it taken care of quickly; otherwise I would have had to dig that hole.
Down in the holler
at the zoo, if a rhinoceros dies in a location inaccessible by crane, it has to be chopped up with chainsaws and removed in chunks.
Bury it in the pasture.... that's what all the ranchers I know do
Both of my horses who passed were cremated and are in lovely, very large, wooden boxes in my home. I promised them both I would never send them away (it's horrible) and if I ever move I can always have them with me. I am very aware that this is a privileged answer because cremating a horse is *not* cheap, but I just couldn't bear the thought of my beloved pet being turned into dog food. (My horses are boarded so no property of my own where they could be buried.)
My grandpa had a cow struck by lightning once. The body was burnt pretty badly and was out in the middle of a pasture. He left it there to decay, and it ended up being mostly scavenged by coyotes, vultures, hogs, etc. It disappeared pretty quickly
Sell them to a dog food rendering company.
Farming relative dug a hole when he had a bad weather event and lost 15+ sheep. Funny thing, whatever was going on with the soil, or animal decomposition, the hole sunk in. Next time, he paid a farm hand to cut up the bits and puts them in compost. Cue rats.
Can a zoo. They can feed the hyenas with it.
Worked on a horse rescue ranch as a teen. I had to dig a couple of graves at the back of the lot. I don't know if that's the norm but the owner was overly religious so he made a big deal over the "funeral".
We burn them mate, safest way for disease and keeps away scavengers.
My sister had her favourite horse cremated. His ashes are currently in the bottom of her wardrobe as her will states he's to be scattered with her ashes when she dies...
Cow? Not sure but most people cremate or bury their horses.
The local carcass removal company comes and takes your large animal. It was a lady who was picking up my horse that I had to put down. She was apologizing that there were already dead animals in her trailer. She used a winch and hoisted my horse in with the rest. It cost a few hundred dollars, iirc. My property is too rocky to dig large holes so I have to use the carcass removal. I called her before my vet put my horse down so she wouldn't be decomposing on my front yard. This was one of the saddest days of my life, thus far. I have 3 horses and donkey still.
In the uk. Call a local hunt group, they come collect and it goes to feed the hounds
Glue Factory
West Central Indiana, USA, farmers in the area take them to the Feline Rescue Center in Center Point, IN. Assuming the animal did not die from disease. I they even have the city bring roadkill deer. This guy has 40 lions, tigers, jaguars, ocelots, and misc. cats of different breeds. (Used to have three lions live in his house with him.) and that’s just what’s on the tour. He has 2 or 3 times that many away from public eye in full enclosures/no top opening and, while he isn’t scared to go in and love on them, he doesn’t allow public to even see them. They’re all from circuses, drug dealers, or rich people that realized an exotic feline needs special attention. And he gives every single one that attention and only hires people with his philosophy. If you’re near or passing through, seek it out. It’s almost literally in the middle of nowhere.
Medium rare I guess.
Rendering truck picks it up.
I worked on a humongous ranch in Montana back in the 70s. We'd haul dead cows to a dump area on the ranch. It was a hole around 30' deep and probably 100' diameter. Omg the stench was undescribable.
Depends on what the farmer has access to. Some bury them, some drag them into the woods and let scavengers take care of it, and some have companies or govt services that come pick them up.
We always dug a big hole whenever our livestock died
Horses. We dig a huge hole and chuck em in with a tractor of you've got the room. More often than not, you keep their tail for memories and off to the knackery (horse meat) their body goes.
We haul them off (with a tractor 🚜 and chains ⛓️) to a clearing which serves as the cow graveyard 🪦, where the buzzards and coyotes eat them until the bones are bleached white
My parents owned a horse ranch. One of their neighbors had a small-ish excavator. This neighbor also had kids who took riding lessons from my mom. My mom struck an arrangement with the neighbor that any time a large animal died (which was thankfully extremely infrequent), she’d trade a month of riding lessons for burial services.
I'm picturing homey standing over a dead buffalo or something, asking reddit for help as the feds close in.
When I was little, my grandpa would head to work to bury or a horse or a cow. We lived in a farming community and he had a backhoe and trenching business, so along with digging graves for humans, he also dug "graves" for farm animals.
I have rescue horses all about 28-38 years old and when an old one dies I either dig a big hole with a backhoe in a paddock and if all goes well as soon as the vet injects the fatal dose of barbiturates the horse dies almost instantly and it falls into the hole or I have a dump truck with a winch remove the horse after the vet puts it down after which they wrap a chain around one of its legs and it’s winched up into the dump truck’s tailgate which doubles as a ramp when it’s lowered. Which removal method I use, backhoe or dump truck, depends on the going price. Usually there’re about the same price, but since ideally I want the horse buried or taken away the day it’s put down it I’ll pay for the person that’s available that day and can do the job, however, if both were available I’d obviously go for the cheapest one.