Veterinarian caught Army in a lie

D.A. Osguthorpe, a prominent veterinarian and rancher for six decades in Utah, was instrumental in solving one of the state's strangest mysteries --- how 6,000 seemingly healthy sheep dropped dead in western Utah's Skull Valley in 1968. Osguthorpe, who went by the nickname "Doc," died Monday at his Holladay home. He was 88. His 1968 investigation, which included autopsies of the sheep, led him to put the blame squarely on the U.S. Army, which eventually admitted it had conducted nerve gas tests from an airplane in the area. The federal government later paid thousands of dollars to the ranchers who had lost their sheep. Twenty years before his investigation into the sheep deaths, Osguthorpe had become a veterinarian in Utah, specializing in larger animals like horses, cattle and sheep. Among his many wards, Osguthorpe received the CSU Alumni Association's Distinguished Alumni Award in 1999. "I know he got some flak from that Skull Valley thing, but he won out in the end," Vanderhoof said. In his report of the sheep deaths, Osguthorpe noted that the Army denied any involvement, but his investigation discovered that the nerve gas was discharged from the plane and carried away from the test area by the wind. Eventually, it was brought to the ground by rain and snow, contaminating the sheep's fodder...SaltLakeTribune