A Sterling rancher faces more than a dozen counts of animal cruelty after 16 emaciated or possibly diseased cattle were impounded on the Logan County property.
Investigators said there were 79 decomposing carcasses found on the property, buried beneath hay, stored in outbuildings and frozen in a pond on property owned by Gilbert Dean Schuman, 57.
“There was everything from bones to newly dead carcasses,” said Joseph McBride, a Logan County Sheriff’s Office investigator.
Between 50 and 70 live animals remain on Schuman’s property.
The sheriff’s office received anonymous calls in February about numerous dead animals at Schuman’s, according to the arrest affidavit. One caller told deputies Schuman had asked him to remove dead cows from a pond and “drag them over a hill so they could not be seen.” The same anonymous source reported sheds full of dead cows.
Nearly a dozen bovine remains were found in a series of outbuildings on the property, according to the arrest affidavit, and five carcasses sat in a pond from which remaining cattle were drinking.
The Northeast Colorado Department of Health also received complaints about Schuman’s property, said Julie McCaleb, environmental health director for the department.
“For Mr. Schuman we have, starting in 2003, complaints almost every year,” McCaleb said.
She estimated the property is about 160 acres and said it’s within a mile of a country club, making it highly visible.
Colorado Department of Agriculture’s bureau of animal protection is assisting the Logan County Sheriff’s Office in the investigation, including assessing animal health.
“We could be looking at anything from malnutrition to . . . if there is a disease component there,” said Scot Dutcher, chief of the bureau of animal protection.
Colorado’s animal protection bureau investigates more than 12,000 animal cruelty reports a year, said Dutcher. Last year, only 38 involved cattle.
“I can’t think of any producer who has made money on a neglected cow,” Dutcher said.
Schuman is free on bond. He is to appear in Logan County court Monday on the misdemeanor charges.
Heather McWilliams: 303-954-1698 or hmcwilliams@denverpost.com
