Holy cow! Herd roams industrial estate (From This Is Wiltshire)

Holy cow! Herd roams industrial estate

12:15pm Thursday 30th October 2008 in

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JUST why the concrete of Churchfields seemed so much more attractive than their own juicy water meadow is a mystery.

But a roving band of cattle couldn’t resist the industrial estate at the weekend.

Five times they broke out of their field behind the estate and crossed the River Avon in search of pastures new. And five times, police were sent out to herd them back.

Passing motorist Barry Makin caught the escapees on camera in Stephenson Road on Friday morning.

“They were heading straight towards my car,” he said. “They seemed to be in a pretty aggressive mood, and it would have been very unwise to get out and ask what was going on.

“There were about seven or eight policemen running around after them, which was only making them more frightened.” PC Dean Garvin was one of the unlucky officers. “When we first got called out, we wondered if someone was winding us up,” he said.

“After all, it’s quite unusual to find cows on an industrial estate.”

At 3pm the cattle were back – and they’d brought a couple of friends. “There were ten of them,” said acting inspector Chris Bevan.

At 7am on Saturday, when the next call came in, weary officers went out to round up the usual suspects and found their numbers had grown to 12.

As efforts were made to track down their owner, further breakouts were reported on Saturday afternoon and early on Sunday, but, by then, the numbers of escapees were shrinking, and there have been no more since.

It must have sunk into those bovine brains the grass really isn’t always greener.