To the ranchers who have been or who will be affected by a cattle or horse mutilation – you have my condolences and my attention. Each one of these events results in a very significant and unrecoverable financial loss for you, and can be emotionally traumatic as well.
As far as I am aware, no funding source to cover the considerable financial expense involved in a study like this has ever been available. If you know a bureaucrat or politician who could be helpful in developing a source of funding to help cover the costs of the shipping, lab testing fees, or vet fees required for this study, please let me know. My motivation for being involved in this effort is strictly due to scientific interest. I do not expect nor do I intend to profit from this study in any way, but I cannot provide funding to properly carry out these studies alone. We need a grant/funding source.
This website will serve as a clearinghouse of information when NEW CASES of cattle mutilations occur anywhere in the USA or Canada. When those events happen, and they will, please send me copies of your expense receipts, along with all documentation of the case, test results, etc. If it all looks legit I will then send out a notice to everyone who registers in our NETWORK, asking them to send to your address (but under no obligation to do so) a small donation (your expenses divided by the total number of persons registered with the network) to help cover your expenses for the shipping and testing. There is likely no way you will receive compensation for the loss of your animal but we will see, depending on to what extent our network grows in numbers. If we can gather together enough people who become interested in this, then perhaps even that might become possible.
July 30, 2018: My cost (RKO) to ship the 1st blood sample to UC Davis CAHFS lab overnight delivery via UPS: $204.57. Lab fees were $329.70. Total = $534.27
Richard O’Connor, M.D.
Email: rkojaml@gmail.com
Phone: (406) 461-2823
Mail: PMB 2046, 1 Jackson Creek Road, Clancy, MT 59634
Mysterious Cuts - A Study of Cattle Mutilations in the USA and Canada. 