NEWS

Three vehicles collide with more than a dozen cows in Clinton County

Animals break out of pens, wander into road

Curt Smith
Lansing State Journal

DALLAS TWP. – Three motorists struck 14 cows that wandered into the middle of a road Tuesday morning in rural Clinton County.

Motorists hit 14 cows that wandered onto a Clinton County road early Tuesday.

One person was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not serious and another sought individual treatment, according to Clinton County sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Spitzley.

The crashes took place around 5:30 a.m. on Grange Road near Taft Road, north of Westphalia, Spitzley said.

He said police speculate that the cows, which were being held at a farm a several miles away, broke out of their pens during the overnight rainstorm.

Spitzley said 14 cows were hit, and four or five that weren’t killed in the crashes had to be put down. He said it was not immediately clear how many cows wandered away from the farm, and said deputies were still in the process of locating other cows that fled the farm but were not on the road at the time of the crash.

“They weren’t large milking cows,” he said. “They were what they call feeder cows — in between calves and full-grown cows.

“The smaller ones still do a lot of damage.”

Contact Curt Smith at (517) 377-1226 or csmith@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @CurtSmithLSJ.