I had the same exact thing happen to me 5 years ago. When i went to feed the cows (22 beef cows) at a farm that i take care of. Only half of the hay was eaten and the cows were gone. They ran threw two fences (4 wire) and did'nt stop for almost ahalf mile. With the snow on the ground, i could see there were dog tracks all over. I found out the next day that coyote hunters run their dogs threw the pasture. I was pi$$ed.

Dogs indeed swim. But ask any hound hunter if their dogs will run a bear or anything else after it swims a river.

MLO, That has been considered, and it does sound logical. There are no coyote hunters with dogs in this area and hound season was over.

haystack , unfortionaly sprouls gone but he was the one on this forum with the knowlage (believed in) the cougar sighting

To start with, inever asked anyone to provide me with proof. This isMY heart-felt OPINION!!!!!!!!........on whathappened that night. There are but a handful of animalsin the U.S.that can travelthe distance this thing covered in a single night, all the way causing a pronound affect onevery cow herd in it's wake. As i said, bear, coyotes and DOGS areaplenty in this area, and are always in close proximity to cattle with hardly a single negative impact on them in my lifetime and the lifetime of many elderly farmers in the area.

b tip whatever happen for your animals sake i hope dont happen again. But i guess you have permission from you game dept to kill anything it was for your sake i hope its not endangered

Bowtruck, Western Mt lions are not endangered.

i said or ment to say whatever it is i truely think you will find it was not a cougar. but thats JMHO

Well '06 I am very openminded. And Quite frankly I do believe it is highly possible that there are cougars in the NE. Just because no one has pictures or other proof. I know I don't carry a camera into the woods every time I do. And ther are several times I wish I would have.Also, I've stated that opinion several times on other posts on this exact subject. Or perhaps you are just to young in here to have read them.But when you make a post, you shoud give as much detail as you have and not leave it so vague.
So if you can't detect a bit of humor in a post, I truly feel sorry for you.
Anyway, after reading most of these posts did any of you consider it may have been the weather that caused the cattle to run?From what I've read, it snowed, then freezing rain dropping the temperature dramatically. I bet it was windy too. Add all that weight on the trees and the wind blowing and you have snapping branches, falling trees topped off by the cattle having a difficult time on the ice and you have a recipe for panic. I'm not a cattle person but seems plausable to me.

Bronko, i'm not trying to be argumentative or too stiff to find humor in life, but this is something that has me yearning for a definitive answer. And for me, this seems like a logicalpossibility as crazy as that sounds.