FEEDLOT CATTLE IN THE RAIN
The sky unloads onto crowded cattle,
Constrained in pens, mud caked to the knees,
A season of rain across thick red hides.
The lonely look of cows bogged down,
In faeces & urine,
Rainfall compounds the problem.
Fermenting grain churning through intestines,
Reducing appetite & leading to wasting,
Where they stand still.
Wind-chill lighting up the joints into fire.
Until legs fall out from underneath them
& they splash into their own waste.
What do they think about all day, at night,
Robbed of herd & foraging? They must be mad,
Sad & cold, but still they breathe, they shiver.
The hoofs & skin surrounds are softened:
Sole ulcers, sole penetration, foul-in-the-foot,
Dilated blood vessels & swelling,
The spread of wet infection,
Across blankets of rain-soaked cattle,
Virus & ringworm tucking them in,
To dark nights of heavy rain,
Boredom, stress & lameness,
Respiratory diseases from high grain diets,
Bone-cold beneath the stars.
Rain drenched beef with fear in the horns,
Legs buckled in at the knee-ache.
For companionship: their suffering kind,
Grey thunderclouds & a dose of dark humanity,
Facilities for loading & unloading cattle,
Waste disposal equipment, fuel storage
& a sodden slaughterhouse,
With concrete floors for the blood to wash off
Rushed into the rain with a hose.
Processed death on its way to a river in flood.
The run-off an overspill of sloppy residuals:
Stockpiled dry & wet manure, pesticides,
Antibiotics, pharmaceuticals, artificial fertiliser,
Growth hormones, micro-organisms, pathogenic
Bacteria & 5000 cattle dead from botulism.
This goes into the river system.
The algae blue green flow, moving through
Landscapes sick from dying cattle,
Knee deep in mud & grief,
Swollen in floodways or bulldozed into pits. |
