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Kit Metzger at Flying M Ranch isn’t the only Coconino County rancher to find cattle lying dead on their land with parts of their bodies missing.

And mutilations aren’t the only possible cause of the strange incisions and body part removals.

That’s the message from Lt. Randy Servis, a regional supervisor with the Arizona Department of Agriculture’s animal service division. Servis has been investigating suspected cow mutilations around the county for more than two decades.

The cases on Metzger’s ranch resemble a rash of cases he investigated in the early 1990s, Servis said. Over three years Servis, who was a ranch deputy for the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office at the time, helped investigate about 100 cases of suspected cattle mutilations and determined 20 or 30 of them to be human-caused.

Those cattle had several features in common that Servis said indicates they were cut by a human hand. First, there is a lack of blood on the ground and in the carcass, which wouldn’t be the case if other animals were picking at and eating at the dead cow, Servis said. Second, one or more organs have been removed with clean, circular cuts unlikely to be caused by scavengers. Lastly, a piece of the face — lip, nose, cheek or something else — has been removed from the head of animal, Servis said.