Cows are the second-most abundant mammal on Earth, behind humans.

Let's assume for the sake of this exercise that the mutilations are the work of an extraterrestrial or interdimensional species.  What would be the purpose of mutilating cows and leaving them to be found?

Is it intended to strike fear into the other cows and the aliens don't know cows are stupid?  Do the aliens assume because the cow population is so huge, they must be a dominant species on our planet and they are simply studying what makes them tick?  If that was the case, why would they mutilate so many?

It is hard to make sense of it.

I’ve always been skeptical of the phenomenon.  I’ve heard some strange stories about it recently on this forum. https://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/2455127_Cattle-Mutilations.html

I don’t know if it’s predation, hoaxes, insurance fraud, ghost stories, or true.  Maybe a mix of all of them.

This.

When not done by aliens it's just that the soft moist parts are eaten bugs leaving the hard dry areas to beaten by other critters later.  However to some folks, it just has to be aliens.

Cow dies.

Buzzard eats it’s ass and face first.

Farmer finds cow but scared buzzards aren’t seen. Cleetus the farmer says aliens did it.

It's not that simple.  You just described a normal death that any farmer doesn't think twice about.

There are many compelling cases that baffled veterinarians and wildlife experts who aren't stupid enough to see depredation/scavenging and say "this is mysterious!"

Dismissing the entire subject so casually isn't so easy when you dig into it.

This is true. Farmers and cattleman know full well what predation looks like. I've seen it and it looks like what you'd expect, whether the cow died from a predator attack or natural causes.

Cow dead in a field will be consumed first by larger carnivores and finally by smaller animals and insects.  It's all very messy with an abundance of animal tracks and sign around it.  

Well documented mutilations are nothing like that. In fact, they are just about the opposite.

I have no idea who or what is doing it.

This stuff has always bothered me. I have never really done alot of research on the subject. I imagine two reasons as to why cows.

Maybe because "they/it" see how much we value cows. Milk and meat by the millions of cows. Maybe they want to know why and what is inside them.

Or

Maybe this happens to alot of animals in the wild aswell as on farms. But cows are so common and farmers are going to notice a dead cow alot quicker than a guy is going to come across a mutilated deer or raccoon in the middle of nowhere just by chance. I have no proof of this it is just speculation.

Im talking abouy the actual mutilations that are pretty much unexplained because of the precision, lack of blood, speed they are done, whatever the case may be. The ones that arent just a weird looking dead animal carcass that someone is exaggerating for attention.

If that makes any sense to anybody

The dead cow in a field with various parts missing isn't weird. That can be naturally explained without anything odd or weird.

Even missing organs can be explained by cattle rustlers - some people think hearts and livers are tasty and others think there is some magic property in some part of the animal.

The lack of blood/gore is what's weird because it's hard to pull off even for people and sort of illogical (who cares if they leave a pool of blood in a field that they don't own).    

Yep. The lack of blood is a weird one.

Strangest I've heard personally was from a cattle rancher (Dave Womack)  I interviewed over in Christmas Valley, Oregon for an agriculture magazine I work on. This had all of the standard cattle mutilation things: sex organs removed, no blood, etc. BUT, the weird part was that this (bull) was found dead right beneath a huge juniper tree only a couple hours after one of the ranchers had seen it alive and well. In this case, all of the branches of the juniper tree above the bull had been "cored out", like some sort of death ray came down and zapped them.  

Here's the interview. I ask him about the cattle mutilation at the 8:38 mark. We were in a diner, so there's a lot of background noise.

How about sheep massacres?

I've watched that before when you posted it.  Farmers, ranchers know more about animals than soldiers, city folks, pretty much anyone.  They live closer to the animals birth, life, death, than anyone else.  They are the experts.  They know what a dead cow looks like, and normal predation.  When a cow dies and nothing will eat it, not even buzzards, and it just lies there for months until it is desicated, blown away by the wind....something is very, very wrong.  Nature despises a vacuum, and waste.  Buzzards, flies, maggots, bacteria, they specialize in cleaning up death.  When they won't touch something, there is a mystery that needs to be examined closely.

While I generally agree with you. I have stumbled on elk who obviously died of natural causes that nothing fed on. One cow elk had its rear leg caught in the fork of a tree and obviously starved to death yet not a thing had taken a bite.  I have also had a calf die of some kind of infection or something in a stall in my barn and then taken the calf out to the pasture where the coyotes would normally eat him and had not a single bite taken out of him.

Agree 100%

Buzzards don't scare easy. Hell I've had to stop in the road because they didn't wanna leave a dead rabbit.

And as to who/what is doing it and why, its not possible to know their reasons without knowing a lot about them and why they are here. I think we may be on the verge of getting some answers but unfortunately I also think it will be a violent process.
We think of the Earth as ours - our home. Suppose 'they' are under the impression that they discovered this solar system and our nice planet and it belongs to them. In all of our own history, what happened to the indigenous population of a place once it was 'discovered' by a more advanced civilization?