A Co. Meath farmer had a lucky escape when one of the cows on her farm charged her and trampled her after it gave birth to a bull calf.
Speaking on the John Murray show on RTE, Ann Farrell explained how she went out into the field of sucklers to check on the cows around calving.
Ann said that she saw there was a bull calf in the field so she turned away and started counting the other cows.
She then said she saw something move out of the corner of her eye.
The cow charged me, hit the side of my head with her head and knocked me unconscious for a minute of two. She then trampled across me and a second time from head to feet and went back to where her calf was.
Ann said that at this stage she was screaming her head off but that her husband wasn’t there and neither was her son; everyone was away.
Then the other cows in the field came over to her and went in a circle around her, not letting the cow near her.
“I staggered over to the ditch, they stayed with me until I got to the road and she was still trying to get near me,” she said.
Ann then told of how she made her way to the neighbours house across the road and they brought her to a doctor who then called an ambulance.
“I was black from my head to my shoulder and from hip to ankle. I was considerably shook, had tissue damage to my head and face and I had hoof marks on me,” she said.
The cow went completely ‘loco’, we kept her for a month, you couldn’t keep her around.
After five years she has no hoof marks but has terrible nerve damage to her face.
“The doctors were looking at me saying ‘why aren’t you dead?’,” she said.
Ann said that she had no broken bones that if it hadn’t been for the cows she was toast.
