For twenty-seven years this website has documented individual bovine abductions. One cow here, one cow there, a steer on the Nullarbor, a heifer outside Boulia, Beryl. Individual cases are easy to dismiss. “Roma saleyards”, they say. “Dingoes”, they say. “Warren, she’s in the next paddock”, they said once, and she was, but that was a different cow.
What has never been done is the arithmetic. Until now.
Method
I obtained the published national herd figures for the last financial year from the appropriate statistical body, by downloading them, which took most of a Tuesday because the internet at the Royal only works near the window. I then obtained the figures for cattle slaughtered, cattle exported live, cattle recorded as deceased on farm, and calves born. These are all public numbers. Anyone can get them. Nobody has ever put them in the same place, and I think we all know why.
The reconciliation is simple. You take the herd at the start of the year. You add the calves. You take away the slaughtered, the exported and the dead. What you are left with should be the herd at the end of the year.
It is not.
The calculation
I set it out in full because Keith has already written to say I won’t.
| Line | Item | Head |
|---|---|---|
| A | Opening herd | 24,400,000 |
| B | Calves born (added) | 8,100,000 |
| C | Slaughtered (removed) | 7,200,000 |
| D | Live exported (removed) | 1,100,000 |
| E | Died on farm (removed) | 600,000 |
| F | Expected closing herd (A + B − C − D − E) | 23,600,000 |
| G | Published closing herd | 23,560,000 |
| H | Discrepancy (F − G) | 40,000 |
Forty thousand cows. Opening the year on paper, not closing it on paper, and not appearing in any of the columns where a cow is allowed to go. Not sold. Not eaten. Not shipped. Not dead, officially.
I have checked the sum four times. Shane has checked it on the computer. The computer agrees, after some discussion.
Where are they
Forty thousand head is roughly the population of a regional city. It is 44 Beryls per day, every day, for a year. It is, if loaded at the rate observed on the 1994 tape (one cow per 18 seconds, legs down), approximately 200 hours of continuous beam time, which is consistent with the number of nights per year the dogs hum.
The Collective’s position is that the 40,000 are in the domes at Pine Gap, or have passed through them. Pine Gap Pete, consulted by Keno slip, has indicated that this is “about right” and also “a bit low if anything”.
Objections, anticipated
Keith will say “rounding”. Each of those published figures is rounded to the nearest hundred thousand, he will say, and a 40,000 difference is “inside the noise”. To which I say: that is exactly where I would hide 40,000 cows. In the noise. If you wanted to take a city’s worth of cattle off a continent without anybody noticing, you would do it one Beryl at a time, under the rounding, and you would make sure the man who publishes the figures rounds generously. I am not accusing the statistical body of anything. I am saying their rounding is suspicious and I have reported it.
Keith will also say “the figures are estimates from surveys and don’t reconcile because they’re not meant to”. To which I say: then what are they for.
A word from management
I have been doing the books on this station for thirty-eight years and I have never once had the herd reconcile to the head, and we have nine hundred, not twenty-four million. Cows get missed at muster. Calves get counted twice. Tags come off. The numbers in Lyle's table are national estimates with a margin of error bigger than the entire Wandoona district. Also, and I've checked this, he has put the calves in at the wrong line, because the published herd figure already includes them, so he's counted eight million calves twice and then wondered why he's got a number left over. When I pointed this out he said the double-counting was "a separate anomaly" and that he would be "investigating it". He has now set the status to DEVELOPING, which I have learned means "Noreen was right but we're not saying so yet". — Noreen
Status
Pending Noreen’s point about the calves, which I am investigating as a separate anomaly, the discrepancy stands at 40,000 or, if the calves are adjusted, at a figure I am not yet prepared to publish because it is negative, which would mean there are more cows than there should be, which is worse, because where did they come from.
I will be presenting the full audit at the Royal on Friday. Bring a calculator. Bring two. Mine has started giving different answers depending on who’s holding it, which I have logged.
— Dr L. Faraday, D.Uf. (by post)
Document U8MC-21-0207. Status: DEVELOPING. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.