Pregnant and homeless
20 cows in crisis: Children's ministry wants to free bovines from prison, but can't find any takers

Jim Beatty
Vancouver Sun

February 14, 2004
VICTORIA -- Yippee-ai-ay, cowboy. The B.C. government done got itself a cow crisis.

The B.C. ministry which finds adoptive homes for hundreds of children every year is stuck with an unusual and embarrassing problem: It can't find homes for 20 cows.

And within months, the 20 cows -- which are all pregnant -- will become 40 animals.

The awkward dilemma, which has been the source of much bureaucratic mirth in Victoria, centres on the government's attempts to shut down a youth correctional facility near Kamloops.

The High Valley Youth Correctional Camp, an under-utilized facility for young offenders, is expected to shut down in May. The children and family development ministry is making plans to transfer the 12 young offenders to other facilities and is attempting to place about 30 employees in other jobs.

But the ministry didn't anticipate its biggest headache would involve 20 beef cows that were used at the ranch to teach animal husbandry skills to the young offenders.

Essentially, the province is abandoning their home on the range.

"We're looking for adoptive parents for 20 pregnant cows," Children and Family Development Minister Christy Clark admitted Friday in an interview with The Vancouver Sun. "We don't know what to do with the cows. First of all they're pregnant and second, there isn't a big market for cows these days with the BSE crisis."

Ministry bureaucrats, who admittedly know little about animal husbandry, can't explain why all 20 cows are pregnant at the same time.

"I gather the bull had one really great day," quipped Alan Markwart, the assistant deputy minister who has been charged with sorting out the mess.

But it is the mass pregnancy -- more than the mad cow disease crisis or low beef prices -- that is causing most of the trouble. The cows are all due to deliver on May 15, about two weeks after the facility is to close.

Further complicating matters, animal experts have warned the government it would be extremely disruptive to relocate the cows before or immediately following the deliveries.

Further still, the government has been told not to separate the cows from the calves for several weeks.

Then there is the cost of the mass delivery, which the government didn't anticipate in its financial plans to close the facility.

Clark assures nervous B.C. taxpayers that the cow conundrum will not force the facility to stay open a day longer than necessary.

"We're not going to spend an extra penny because we need to keep it open to provide a home for the cows."

For a ministry recently racked by political scandal and troubling questions about its plans to cut costs and reorganize service delivery, the cow crisis has provided some overdue levity.

The ministry, which normally refers to children in care using the acronym "CIC," is now calling the High Valley situation the "CIC (cows in care) crisis."

The camp, which had an annual operating budget of $3.65 million, is the last of four such B.C. facilities to close due to budget cuts. Together, the four facilities cost taxpayers $10 million a year to operate, at a time when youth crime has been falling dramatically.

In 1996, the province cared for 400 young offenders -- aged 12 to 17 -- who had been sentenced to either secure custody, open custody or remand facilities.

Today, the number of youths in custody has dropped to 150.

After six months of fruitless attempts to get rid of the cows -- the ranch is also ridding itself of five horses, two goats and a mess of chickens -- it may now turn to the Internet.

"We're trying to decide whether we should place an adoption notice on our Web site," Clark said, trying not to laugh. "I mean, how else do you notify people that you've got 20 pregnant cows that need loving, adoptive barns."