Cattle mutilation refers to the discovery of livestock, predominantly cattle, dead under circumstances that some observers describe as unexplained, often marked by the removal of specific tissue. The phenomenon has been discussed for decades in ufological circles and has occasionally intersected with US government-adjacent testimony.
Luis Elizondo said that a veterinarian from Montana, who worked with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and had conducted autopsies on mutilated cattle, told him he believed the animals had been killed by a technology not yet seen, and that no one besides the ranchers was taking the matter seriously.1 Elizondo also said that bovine samples related to alleged cattle mutilations could reportedly be found with the USDA.2
Erik Nanstiel said that in recent cattle mutilations, as in the work of Linda Moulton Howe, animals are found completely exsanguinated where their carcasses are dumped, with certain tissues removed apparently using high-heat instruments such as a laser.3 Nanstiel further said he theorises that the Greys (extraterrestrial beings) consume bovine blood because of its close genetic resemblance to human blood, since they can no longer demand human blood en masse from civilisations as he believes they once did.4
Nanstiel also said that, according to a legend, Dwight D. Eisenhower was offered two deals, one of which came from the Greys and offered technology to the military in exchange for the right to abduct humans and cattle within the United States from a set list — an arrangement Nanstiel said he does not think the Greys adhered to.5 This account is connected to the wider narrative of the Eisenhower extraterrestrial treaty (alleged).