SANFORD, Fla. – For nearly a year, volunteers say they’ve been trying to keep a herd of cattle alive.
They’ve bought food. Hauled water. Documented the animals’ condition with photos and videos. Sent emails to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, Seminole County Animal Services and HCA Florida Lake Monroe Hospital. And they say they repeatedly asked someone to step in.
Then Tuesday, they arrived at the pasture off International Parkway in Sanford and found a dead mother cow and her newborn calf.
That discovery led News 6 through months of emails, sheriff’s reports and interviews with everyone involved to answer one question:
What happened after all those warnings?
Volunteers say they first got involved last summer after seeing cows they believed looked severely underweight. They began feeding and caring for the herd themselves while documenting what they saw.
Ten days before the mother cow died, volunteer Anouska Moses emailed authorities about what she believed was that very cow, writing that it appeared malnourished while pregnant and nursing a calf.
Two days later, Seminole County Sheriff’s Office Captain Mark Pergola responded by email, saying deputies trained in Body Condition Scoring, along with the Florida Department of Agriculture, had evaluated the herd and found it was being properly cared for.
News 6 obtained sheriff’s reports documenting repeated calls about the cattle. Those reports show deputies consistently concluded they did not have evidence of criminal animal neglect, though one detective also wrote he believed “best cattle ranching practices are not being properly followed.”
On Thursday, the Sheriff’s Office told News 6 detectives have “periodically checked on the herd over time” and “have not identified any evidence indicating criminal activity or animal neglect that would warrant a criminal investigation.”
The agency said it will continue monitoring the cattle.
While News 6 was reporting at the property Wednesday, workers arrived to feed the herd. Volunteers said they’d only seen someone else feeding the cows a handful of times over the past year.
When News 6 asked the workers who hired them, they declined to answer.
News 6 also reached out to HCA Florida Lake Monroe Hospital, which owns the property where the cattle are grazing, asking about its agreement with the cattle owner, what responsibility it believes it has for the herd and whether anything has changed since the deaths.
And News 6 left a message for cattle owner Jason Lee.
Neither had responded by the time this story was published.