"The tank was three-quarters full, so they were just about able to hold their heads above the slurry which was well up over their backs."

These were the words of Monaghan dairy farmer Julie Mullarkey, who had two cows spend a night in a slatted tank after they fell through a rotten aluminum agitation point cover last week.

Luckily, just two cows fell in and both survived the ordeal with minimal injuries, despite having been in the tank for almost 12 hours.

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Julie and her father came on the scene of the incident last Saturday after arriving for morning milking.

"We landed down as normal and started to scrape down - the cows have the run of two cubicle sheds and the mixing point was in a passageway between the two sheds.

We had to move quick

"We could tell there was a bit of unusual activity and the cows were mooing more than usual," Julie said.

"We had to move quick, I started to milk to keep the rest of the herd chill while dad pumped the slurry to a tank in another shed.

"My husband Eamon quickly assembled a 15ft ramp for them to walk up. We then had to remove three sets of gang slats in order to have room for the ramp and them to walk up.

"We haltered the cows and attached them to the front loader to aid them up and luckily we got them out relatively easy," she said.

Warning

In sharing her story, Julie said that she hopes other farmers will take action to ensure their covers are OK.

"We've nothing to be ashamed about, this is real-time farming and real life. These things happen and I hope by sharing my story even just one other farmer checks their covers to make sure they're not rotten," Julie said.