DCRO Call-out To Assist in Animal Rescue

We were just about to have dinner when the phone rang. There was a young bull stuck in a mine at a farm in Kniveton.
Karen and I set off to find some Firefighters from Matlock were parked in a field with an old quarry with a large off-road Fire vehicle. Ralph and Pete were already there.
I went over to the mine entrance to find Ralph just inside with one of the Firefighters, who was wearing a full-body harness with a rope attached which was being belayed by other Firefighters using their vehicle as an anchor.
I had a quick chat with Ralph. A young bull was lying on its side some 15 or 20 metres further in and was not getting up even though it seemed to be uninjured. The route in was down a gently-sloping passage with a bit of a step.
I returned to the car and got changed into caving gear and then went in to have a look myself. The bull was indeed lying on its side and was breathing heavily and steaming, so had been active recently. It seemed to either have an injury on the side it was laying on or just simply exhausted. The way on was a dead end and another passage continued on the right next to the bull.
Near the bull was a small framework of rotten old wooden stemples with a small gap between it and the ceiling. The ceiling just there was made of jammed rocks and boulders and seemed safe enough and the stemples weren't supporting anything - which was good news.
I returned to the surface and the Firefighter in charge asked for no one else to go underground until a vet had attended the animal and sedate it.
Other DCRO personnel arrived at various points, including the DCRO vehicle, and we waited as the Firefighters accompanied the farmer to see his animal. He, too, was equipped with a harness and a belay and I leant him my caving helmet and light. But before this happened, some DCRO members had a look at the roof and agreed that it was safe.
The vet soon arrived and he was also taken to see the animal, again with a harness and borrowed helmet and light. He sedated the animal and the Firefighters attached a strop to the bull and used a winch on the front of their vehicle to drag the animal towards the entrance. They had laid a tarpaulin on the adit floor to assist in protecting the bull from injury. The winch seemed to be overloaded and they switched to just reversing their vehicle to continue dragging the bull towards the entrance.
Pretty soon the bull was back on the surface and was assisted from laying on its side to a more upright position by the vet and some farmers. The vet thought it had no major injuries but was exhausted.
A tractor arrived and the bull was placed in the large scoop on the front and driven away to be placed in a farm shed to be allowed to recuperate.
We set off for home at around 20:30 stopping off at the Miners Arms in Brassington for a quick pint.