The prob­lem of wild cat­tle start­ed dur­ing the ad­vanced state of de­cline in the co­conut in­dus­try in the Ce­dros area on the se­mi-aban­doned es­tates from Gal­fa to Ica­cos. For some rea­son which I nev­er un­der­stood, the ma­jor­i­ty of the first own­ers nev­er seemed in­ter­est­ed in demon­strat­ing own­er­ship of their stock which con­tin­ued to mul­ti­ply to the agony of landown­ers, farm­ers and agri­cul­tur­ists. The num­ber of wild cat­tle, as you say, is now in the vicin­i­ty of 2,000-de­struc­tion of which seems to be a rather dis­tress­ing idea for some of us who may recog­nise al­ter­na­tive so­lu­tions. I write about this be­cause I, my­self, to­geth­er with of­fi­cers of the agri­cul­tur­al de­part­ment, was sad­dled with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of rid­ding the dis­trict of this prob­lem dur­ing my tenure as Ward Of­fi­cer, Ce­dros, in the mid 1950s, and even then this proved to be a most dif­fi­cult task as own­ers would nev­er iden­ti­fy with the prob­lem. At times we im­pound­ed an an­i­mal or two but this had proven to be an al­most in­ef­fec­tive so­lu­tion.

The pro­ce­dure for erad­i­ca­tion of these "pests" will be fraught with mass slaugh­ter and the per­ma­nent loss of a very valu­able as­set in the form of an un­usu­al­ly large herd of beef on the hooves, with the at­ten­dant loss of side prod­ucts of milk, ma­nure and oth­er by-prod­ucts. In nor­mal cir­cum­stances, de­vel­op­ment of a herd this size would in­volve con­sid­er­able time and ex­pen­di­ture but this herd is ready made, and, if re­lo­cat­ed to a reg­u­lat­ed an­i­mal farm­ing area, out of the Ce­dros penin­su­la, may prove to be rather chal­leng­ing. How­ev­er, I be­lieve the live­stock in­dus­try is rather for­tu­nate in that the aban­doned Chatham Farm is just a few miles away from Ce­dros (about three miles) and com­pris­es all the in­fra­struc­ture to good hous­ing of these cat­tle. Of course, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ef­forts will be nec­es­sary in or­der to bring this farm up to nor­mal func­tion­ing. Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Chatham farm will pro­vide short-term labour for the im­me­di­ate dis­trict, and con­tin­u­ous labour if these cat­tle find a new home here.

The ben­e­fits to be de­rived from the res­ur­rec­tion of the Chatham farm are tremen­dous: a ready-made herd of cat­tle, which would nor­mal­ly take years to de­vel­op, of­fer­ing a reg­u­lat­ed sup­ply of beef on the hoof an abun­dance of fresh milk com­ple­ment­ed with all the by-prod­ucts of the in­dus­try. The Farm School (Youth Camp) could al­so be re­opened. I am ap­peal­ing to you to re­con­sid­er ex­e­cut­ing this ex­er­cise of slaugh­ter and con­sid­er the al­ter­na­tive of pro­long­ing life and sus­te­nance by us­ing the Chatham farm as an al­ter­na­tive to re­liev­ing the res­i­dents of Ce­dros of this age old prob­lem.

De­o­nanan Jagdeosingh

Diego Mar­tin