CRUELTY TO CATTLE.

NZ Truth, Issue 99, 11 May 1907, Page 6

CRUELTY TO CATTLE.

DALGETY'S SHEDS AT LEVIN.

Undersized, Over-crowded, and Totally Inadequate.

Messrs Dalgety and Co., Ltd., wool, hide, skin, and every other sort ef merchant, recently eirected m Levin an arrangement they term a stockyard. This place is a cramped kind of pen capable of holding about one-quarter the number of animals thai, are usually crowded into it. The pens are situated m tbe centre of the town, and are almost absolutely devoid of drainage. That they are a nuisance to the neighborinsj citizens goes without saying, and that they are totally inadequate for the accommodation of the cattle put»into them without inflicting the grossest cruelty is a fact well known to the townsfolk of Levin, as the following will prove : On Thursday, May 2 a pen of weaners were yarded for Friday's sale. The pen was small, and the animals were MOST SHAMEFULLY CROWDED. They remained m that pen until Friday night, when they were drafted S'ttto a little tart of a pumpkin patch yard, which is only a quagmire, and devoid of a solidary blade of .grass. They remained m this place until Saturday morning, being left 20 odd hours practically without > food at all. The poor animals suffered so that the neighbors were kept awake for two nights with their incessant bellowing. Apart from the horrible cruelty to the animals, the sanitary side of the question calls for ' immediate action. The health inspector should investigate the matter, and do his duty, notwithstanding that the culprits are the great Dalgety 's— the great 8 per cent, farmers' philanthropists. Private citizens and 'small householders are subjected** to all kinds of regulations, . but the big firm can own a stink that, would make the back room pf a Chow fruit shop smell sweet m comparison. But it is only a repetition of the old story— the financially strong and the humanly weak. Were Dalgety not the financial terror that it is,' it is safe to say that, these sheds would have been condemned before ,I'hey were were built.