Wealth Blog | Feral cattle – are sneaky moves the answer?

Readers were no doubt puzzled to learn that the government has been secretly trucking feral cattle to strange places in a bid to make them behave more like obedient poodles and less like roaming bovines.

The somewhat ironically named Agriculture Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) fessed up last weekend that it had, since November 20, rounded up 29 cattle in Sai Kung and carted them off to Shek Pik Reservoir on Lantau. Meanwhile they moved 21 from Lantau to High Island in Sai Kung. En route they took them to their farm for castration and sterilisation, to stem the recent population explosion.

AFCD really had no choice but to own up. The eagle-eyed pro-cattle and buffalo organisations soon spotted missing and new bovine faces, due to their numbered ear tags.

There are thought to be about 1200 bovines on Lantau and in the New Territories. They were simply let go when the ancestors of the current villagers forsook rice and ginger lily cultivation to work in toy factories or open Chinese takeaways in England. No one needs them now. Even so, AFCD’s insistence on calling them “stray” cattle seems a little harsh, since they have been quietly minding their own business for decades. It’s only now that human development is encroaching on their habitat that there’s a problem.  
 

Startlingly thin

Cow no 3 caught the cattle groups’ attention, being severely underweight. They maintain she has failed to adapt to her new environment. They say cattle are being dumped in areas with insufficient food, water and shade. Though to be fair, when shown this photo, two cattle vets said cows do not have such severe weight loss over night. To them it looked like a chronic problem, possibly a systemic disease, such as Tick fever. Johnes disease or Severe GIT parasitism to name a few - though hard to say without tests. There’s an unconfirmed report that AFCD has been treating one cow for anaemia, which may explain no 3’s condition.