Wisconsin man claims Minnesota feedlot operators broke cattle-rustling law

A Wisconsin cattleman says that two years ago, he began sending cattle to a Pequot Lakes, Minn., feedlot to fatten up for market.

But when selling time came, nearly 600 cattle had died. Another 800 were harmed and in poor health.

Rocky Olsen, a fourth-generation cattleman and co-owner of Premier Livestock & Auctions in Withee, Wis., did not buy the explanation.

Olsen sued David and Angela Sprau, owners of the central Minnesota feedlot, asking for $4.1 million under the state’s “cattle rustling” law that allows for the tripling of damages.

“Other owners who placed cattle [with the Spraus] have reported that they did not have any out-of-the-ordinary deaths in the same time frame,” claims the federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Minnesota.

However, an attorney for the Spraus said Olsen’s suit is filled with “knowingly false statements.”

“The allegations are being made to create scandal when none exists,” said attorney Greg Arneson.

Olsen’s attorney, Kyle Kroll, said in a statement that Olsen “now faces a significant loss of his life’s savings” because of the loss of the cattle.

Olsen began placing cattle with the Spraus’ operation in 2023. But by August 2024, reports on the animals’ progress stopped, according to the complaint.

Last fall, the Spraus alerted Olsen to a virus moving through herds. In January, Olsen drove to Pequot Lakes to see his cattle. That’s when the couple told him 598 of his animals had died of disease, according to the complaint.

“The cattle [Olsen] placed at the [feedlot] were always healthy, and they were appropriately vaccinated for disease,” Olsen’s attorneys said.

They called the mysterious death of hundreds of cattle explanation “fanciful, implausible and impossible.”

Among the charges, including negligence and violation of the federal Packers and Stockyards Act, Olsen also has accused the couple of cattle rustling.

Cattle rustling isn’t just an artifact of the old Wild West. Last fall, police in Bloomington charged a woman with livestock theft after she allegedly tried to steal a ram from a suburban farm.

Also last year, a Clearwater County man was ordered to pay $248,000 after he pleaded guilty to rustling nearly 80 cattle. In 2011, authorities in the Red River Valley charged two teenagers for theft of more than a dozen calves.

The Spraus’ operation has run afoul of the rules in the past. In 2011, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency fined the couple $2,500 for feedlot violations.