Sheriff investigating Coldwater cattle rustling

COLDWATER - The Mercer County Sheriff's Office is investigating a brazen, apparently well-plotted overnight cattle rustling operation that resulted in the theft of 64 freshly-weaned, 13-week-old Holstein calves from a converted cattle barn at 4436 Coldwater Creek Road, just south of State Route 219 in Butler Township.

The calves, valued between $1,800 and $2,000 a piece, were corralled and stolen between 10 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday, Mercer County Sheriff Doug Timmerman told The Daily Standard.

Whoever committed the crime probably had access to "some pretty serious equipment," Timmerman told The Daily Standard.

"You wouldn't be able to just pull up with a van and load these cattle up. You need a truck trailer, even potentially a semi to do that," he said. "Obviously, somebody has thought this out a little bit ahead of time. And you have to have an avenue to get rid of the cattle and/or to finish raising them yourself. So there's been some thought into this."

The sheriff's office's ongoing investigation has not yet yielded any suspect or lead, but Timmerman said personnel are reviewing some camera footage. He urges the public to come forward if they have any information about the daring nighttime theft.

"They would be roughly around 250 pounds. They do have some unique markings on them, so if we were to find them, there would be a chance to identify them," Timmerman said about the calves. "Their tails are docked. … They dock their tails when they're younger. There's not too many people around her ethat do that."

Tail docking is a management practice used within both the dairy and beef industries, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

"It keeps them from swatting each other," Timmerman said in occurrences where the tails were removed.

The calves were taken from a poultry barn that had been converted into a cattle barn. It's owned by Jeff Selhorst, according to Timmerman.

"It's his barn but he doesn't own the cattle. Somebody else owns the cattle in the that bar, and that would be Rob Gaerke," Timmerman said. "It's a standalone barn. The owner of the property lives well over a half a mile away."

These calves were being started by Selhorst Farms on behalf of Gaerke Brother Farms, according to a social media post by Derek Joseph Gaerke.

Not all of the calves in the barn were stolen during the incident.

"Obviously you have your bottle calves which are your newborns up to about 12 weeks. Those weren't touched," Timmerman said. "This was the next set over in the barn, so they would have been weaned already off of the milk, and they were roughly 250 pounds, somewhere between 13 weeks old."

Quite a few calves remain following the overnight theft.

"Common sense is probably telling us that there was probably a trailer-load, a full trailer- load taken, which is why they (perpetrators) probably stopped," Timmerman said. "We suspect it has to be somebody that's very familiar with handling cattle and have the equipment and means to be able to transport that, and not only that, but to care for them afterwards and to have an outlet for them once they leave there."

The cattle rustlers, Timmerman said, are going to have to either finish raising the purloined calves or sell them to some kind of outlet.

"We really need to focus on how they (thieves) are going to recoup this," Timmerman said. "Somebody has to have an avenue on the other end to receive payment for these cattle, whether that's finishing raising them … and selling them later … but I don't know if there's any black market out there for these cattle to be taken to."

The barn was not damaged during the cattle theft.

"They used equipment in the barn to help coral the cattle, though. That part we can tell," Timmerman said about the suspect(s).

Timmerman suggested that evidence is scant at the moment.

"We have a person that has notified us that they have some potential footage on their camera, but we haven't been able to get a clear view of anything, and we're working on details to try to get that figured out," he said.

Deputies are also hoping to gather information from neighbors and the general public.

"We have notified all the area sale barns that we can think of many miles around, including Indiana," Timmerman said. "Sgt. Heinl also went door-to-door leaving door hangers for people, asking them to check if they have Ring doorbell cameras to notify us if there's any activity of seeing trucks and trailers go by their house at that time of the day or night."

Asked about tire markings, Timmerman intimated that was a dead end as "there's a lot of people that came and went from the time we got the call until we got there."

He also addressed the possibility of the cattle rustling being an inside job.

"We have thought that through a hundred times over. There is nothing indicating that … to us whatsoever, because they're very, very hard-working people, and I don't think they have any financial problems that would cause anything like this," Timmerman said. "Does somebody know that they're there? Obviously, somebody would have to know they're there because it is a converted barn from poultry to cattle barn. So it doesn't look like your normal cattle barn."

Timmerman finds the whole situation to be very frustrating.

"I know the owner of the property, and I think I know the owner of the cattle, and they're hard-working people that have got money invested into this just to try to make an honest living, and then we have this happen," Timmerman said.

The sheer scale of the cattle theft is like nothing Timmerman has encountered during his time with the sheriff's office.

"When I was detective, we've had some hogs or pigs stolen before a handful at a time, some other cattle that were taken a handful at a time," he recalled. "I don't ever remember any being this amount … because this is going to take some pretty serious equipment from the person that stole it."

Timmerman asks anyone with information to call the sheriff's office at 419-586-7724.

"If anybody has any information at all, we'll take every phone call we can get to assist us in any manner with this," he said.