CABLE-CHEWING COWS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32360, 28 July 1970, Page 11

CABLE-CHEWING COWS

Competent cow-watchers with good eyesight are earning up to $9O a week in the Waikato basin licence area of Republic Petroleum Corporation (N.Z.) Ltd, • where a seismic field survey is underway to determine oil drilling sites.

Highly sophisticated electric cable is being used by the seismic party to relay soundwave measurements from seismic shot holes to sensitive recording instruments.

Specially imported from the United States at a cost of $BOO a roll, the cable is providing Waikato Friesians with a tasty and expensive change of diet The Seismic party manager, Mr R. Wood, of Athens, Texas, said he was employing local labour to guard the cable from the cows, “but they are not always able to prevent damage in time. Those cows are mighty quick to take advantage.” The cow-watchers were paid $1 an hour, he said, and with overtime were making up to $9O a week. Mr Wood believes the cows are attracted to the cable' by the salts left on it from the palms of the men handling it “Then when they bite into it they can taste the copper wire and they like the mineral flavour.”

The cable is expensive, he said, because it contains 32 insulated wires to relay the seismic information in great

detail back to the recording equipment “My crew and I have to spend the winter evenings splicing the choinped-up cable.”

Despite the problem with the cows, Mr Wood said the quality of the data being obtained in the licence area was excellent. Our recordings are now being flown back to the United States for computer analysis,” he said. These data will give the company’s geologists a picture of the subterranean formations and suggest whether or not they are favourable for the accumulations of oil deposits. In the photograph cowwatcher and cows stare moodily at each other, the Friesians waiting patiently for a chance to sample the cable.