Grahamstown SPCA manager Mark Thomas says poorer farmers in drought-stricken surrounding areas need urgent help to secure safe water supplies for their livestock.
Grahamstown SPCA manager Mark Thomas says poorer farmers in drought-stricken surrounding areas need urgent help to secure safe water supplies for their livestock.
This comes after he and eight other people struggled for hours to rescue a cow from a depleted dam on a farm near Salem on Wednesday.
“The drought is a big problem for outlying emerging farmers,” Thomas said. “And that’s the reason this cow got into trouble.
That dam was just mud − yet the animals are so desperate for water that they’re walking in anyway and getting stuck.”
The SPCA team were called to help by the fire department, which had been diverted to another incident.
The land, 3km past Salem on the Kenton road, is dusty with poor grazing, Thomas said.
“The situation is desperate. There are quite a few head of cattle and only two dams with what I’d estimate to be no more than 100 litres of water between them.
“They’re down to the bottom, with years and years of sedimentation and mud. When the cows go in, they sink to the level of their backs because of their weight.
They get very tired in their efforts to get out – they panic and scrabble around and make the problem worse.”
Another cow in the same plight had died before they were called, Thomas said, but they’d saved this one.
“It took nine guys to pull the cow out – five of us from the SPCA. So it got to live another day.”
Thomas said there was no mains water on the farm, but that some of the homes had small tanks next to them.
“We got the call in at 3.15pm and we were there within 20 minutes,” he said.
