The hides of seven cattle beasts were left hanging on a fence after the animals were slaughtered and stolen from a property on Banks Peninsula in Canterbury.
Police investigating the incident on a property in the Port Levy area say it's believed to have occurred sometime between Saturday January 20 and last Friday, the 26th, when the matter was reported to police.
An adjacent property is also missing five Friesian bulls, said Detective Senior Sergeant Neville Jenkins. The loss of those bulls was discovered around the same period but there is no evidence of them having been slaughtered, he said this evening.
Police believe the person or persons responsible for the slaughter and theft had knowledge of the rural sector and knew what they were doing, Mr Jenkins said.
The cattle stolen had NAIT tags - a national identification tag which records any stock movement - as all cattle should, he said.
This is critical to the bio-security of the dairy industry at the moment, with the Mycoplasma bovis cattle disease situation, Mr Jenkins added.
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