Editor’s Note: A recent town hall meeting in Habersham County revealed a number of public safety issues affecting the county. Over the next several weeks, Now Habersham will take a closer look at these issues and their impact on public safety personnel and the community at large. This is the first article in that series.
There’s a problem in Habersham County with cows, and other large livestock, striking out on their own for strolls outside their pastures. While it might sound like just another charm of rural Georgia, escaped cows are risks to the safety of Habersham’s drivers, farmers and public safety.
“We have a big problem . . . with cows escaping their pastures and getting into roadways,” Habersham County Animal Care and Control Director Madi Nix says. “Because we are a very rural area, this is more common than one might think.”
“The Cow Problem” is a problem animal control doesn’t handle alone. The sheriff’s office is usually involved with, too, as the departments work in tandem to corral wandering cows and other livestock.
“We deal with cows and other livestock all the time,” Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell says. “Dispatch has a ‘cow’ book with names of folks who own animals in areas of the county.”
Nix says this issue happens most often with black cows, which are hard to see and pose a threat to the safety of Habersham drivers.
“Some of the issues that we’ve had with livestock or with cows, in particular, is the immediate danger of somebody hitting one of these animals,” Nix says. “Either in the night or coming around the corner on that can be deadly. If somebody hits a cow in a vehicle, it’s a lot different than hitting a dog, per se.”
Habersham County Animal Control staff corral cows with HCACC vehicles off of a roadway. (Madi Nix/HCACC)
It isn’t just the safety of drivers, escaped cows are often bulls who are on edge, and are a safety risk to the animal control staff and officers dealing with them. That escaped livestock can also wreak havoc on other citizens’ farms, especially those with crops.
“We also have a big issue with folks that do hold these livestock not taking us seriously when officers are making contact in regards to the violation,” Nix says. “We get a lot of ‘It’s a cow, this is farmland, get over it.’ But not only are people’s lives in danger when they [cows] get into the roadway, but we have had citizens that rely on crops that have had their crops destroyed by neighbors’ cattle roaming onto their property.”
What happens with escaped cattle?
Nix says that usually, the cow is claimed and brought back to its pasture fairly quickly. But sometimes, it’s hard to track down the owner, even with the “cow book.”
“Every now and then we can’t find an owner and cow won’t stay out of the road,” Terrell says. “[The] last resort is getting with Madi and doing something with it.”
Nix and Terrell have had to work together to get a cow into a rented trailer and take it to a pasture where it could stay until it was reclaimed. The county’s shelter and animal control facilities don’t have a paddock or a transport vehicle for livestock, even though it’s an issue Nix says they deal with on a regular basis.
“The sheriff’s department nor animal control has the time or the ability to sit and babysit a cow for six hours while we make sure he tries not to get into the road,” Nix says. What the responders often have to do in that situation is take the cow to a nearby pasture and ask the property owner to keep the cow during a holding period.
“If within that holding time the owner is not found, if whatever animal that person has been holding for us wants to keep it, we’ll go ahead and do a transfer to that person,” she says.
Nix is hopeful that the county’s new animal shelter, which is included in the current SPLOST budget, will have an area for livestock to wait to be reclaimed.
What to do when you see lost livestock
Nix and Terrell both say that if you do spot a cow, or any other type of livestock out wandering in the roads, call the non-emergency dispatch line at (706) 839-0570. Do not call 911.
“When someone sees a cow or animal out [in the road] they should call dispatch and report it,” Terrell says. “If they know the owner, it would be great if they contacted them too.”
By reaching out to the non-emergency dispatch line, E-911 operators will be able to dispatch whichever sheriff’s officer or animal control officer is closest to deal with the lost livestock. Nix says if there’s lost livestock on your property, calling animal control directly at (706) 839-0195 is a better method of contact.
