Hubby has a friend with a cow farm. Several times over the last few years he’s called Hubby to come dig a hole to bury bulls. Bulls are quite heavy. They use the backhoe.
A working dairy farm is another matter. Cows are smart enough that they won’t use a pasture with a ‘cow grave’. Usually they called the knacker.
Peasant 1-“That’s the king!”
Peasant 2-“How do you know he’s the king?”
Peasant 1-“He hasn’t got shit all over him.”
There always used to be (or at least seemed to be) lorries driving endlessly around the Northern Irish countryside with dead cows in the back, legs raised to heaven, poking over the top of the lorry. I just don’t see them any more, perhaps I’ve been in the city for too long.
Memorably, we once gave a New Zealander a lift to catch her tour bus and had to take a detour down a country road. We ended up behind one of these lorries, oozing , um, ooze, out the back. Mum looked at me and said that we’d better not get too close, we knew what was in the back. The New Zealander leaned forward from the back seat and whispered anxiously, “Why? D’you think it might be terrorists?” :dubious:
She must have been a city lass - knackers trucks are a pretty common sight in rural NZ, as is a bloated cow on the side of the road with it’s legs sticking up to the sky. That used to really annoy me when I cycled - after about a week you were looking for a new route to work (there wasn’t one 
). In the absence of vultures and coyote (or anything else major) to eat carrion, farms usually have an offal pit for carcass disposal. However, the Resource Management Act pretty much precludes just digging a hole on the ground - you have to ensure that groundwater does not get contaminated, and the smell has to be managed as well. In the days of my youth (about 20 years ago) I used to go caving (spelunking). The caves were under a farming region, and some of the farmers would use a tomo (limestone sinkhole) as an offal pit. Sometimes sheep and cattle just fell in. So you may be pushing a new cave, head to the light and realise it stank of rotting flesh. Now some of the cavers I knew would and did push through rotting carcasses to explore the cave to it’s fullest extent - not me. That was turnabout time. You flagged the location and asked the farmer to use another hole, or fence it off if he didn’t know about it, and go back next summer.
Of course, during something like a Foot-and-Mouth scare, herds of cattle are slaughtered, piled on to pyres with railway ties, soaked in napalm and torched. It stinks, looks appalling, and the mess of ashes are bulldozed into a pit.
Si
I just read the other day that roadkill is sometimes disposed of in a lye bath. The bath turns the carcass into a kind of goo. God knows what you do with said goo – flush it down the toilet, maybe? Anyway, is such a method ever used for cows? I don’t personally have that much lye lying around (ha!), but somebody might.
My parents own a small 70 acre farm in central Ohio. They raise sheep and live stock guardian dogs (Great Pyrenees actually and I’ve never seen them eat carrion like was mentioned above). They also had horses. The sheep were grown for wool and for meat. So the older breading rams and ewes were made in to sausages when they were put down.
When the horses died (from old age one Arab made well past 30 years) they were buried.
Most small farmers have smaller tractors (usually something along the lines of rebuilt Ford 9N). There are all kinds of attachments including front end loader and back hoe attachments. My father uses the tractor to dig a large hole then, scoop up the horse deposit him in said hole and backfill. Several of the dogs were buried this way as well. Great Pyres can get as big as 160 lbs.
I’ve heard of people throwing lime on dead things, but I don’t know why – speed up decay, hide the smell?
I was at a friend’s place in the country a few years ago. There was a godawful stench in the air. He showed me a pit where the farm owner had tossed a dead pig. It was a wet summer, the pit had a foot of water, and the pig was stewing in the heat. Friend said the farmer could have been fined for that.
My dad is a chicken farmer, the dead chickens have been dumped into a dugout, shipped to a renderer, given to a local game farm to feed the lion and tigers, etc. etc. He is back to dumping into a dugout for dogs, coyotes, crows and magpies to feast upon.
Farmer John:
Sorry Jr. Bad News:
Old Porky has passed away.
The Good News:
We’re eating bacon tomorrow morning!
I know of one case where the farmer just left dead cows in the creek.
The Clean Water authorities are now speaking to him.
I do work for this facility. Believe me, you do not want to go up there on a 85+ degree day. 
It would be a great place to film ‘Saw 4’.
I used to live on a family farm with 67 horses, and still live nearby. If one dies, we dig a grave with our backhoe and bury it. It is always a very sad day.
Me too, Lissa. I’m blaming the fact that I’m a city girl.
Really? This is fascinating. Do they smell the dead cow or something? Whoa.
Oh no… I think they grind them up and cook the remains down to get grease out of them, which is subsequently used for soap and other inedible products that use animal fat, but don’t necessarily need it to be food-grade.
Small addition: When my kitty kicks the bucket I’ll just take her into the woods and bury her deep. With an unopened can of Tuna fish. Just to show somebody in the future I really cared for her.
(This won’t happen for another ten years or so!)
We used to just hook 'em up to the tractor and drag 'em into the woods. Vultures did the rest.
“Buzzard’s gotta eat, same as worms.” - Josey Wales.
I grew up on a cattle farm, and never heard of such. I know several farmers who used to dig graves in their pastures with a backhoe and bury dead cattle.
As to bovine intelligence, in my experience the average cow is not much smarter than the average carrot.
They will probably just think that your cat starved to death in front of an unopened can of food! :eek:
You could really mess with them by leaving a can opener in her paws.
Genius!