This may sound like a story out of The Onion or Mad Magazine, but we promise that this isn't a joke.

Derek Gow, a farmer based in the U.K., recently put seven of his cows to death. Why? Gow states that the cows exhibited very aggressive behavior, and feared that they could eventually kill his staff members.

Gow believes that the violent nature of these cows had something to do with the fact that they were engineered by the Nazis back in the 1920s. This is according to a report published by USA Today. 

Gow asserts that the cows already tried to murder members of his staff on multiple occasions, and decided to be proactive and put the cows down before they could cause any fatalities. 

"We have had to cut our herd down to six because some of them were incredibly aggressive and we just couldn't handle them," Gow says.  

The Nazis are of course infamous in world history for their crimes and their desire to create a "master race" of human beings. However, this desire to create perfect creatures also extended to animals as well.

This quest led the Nazis to hire a couple of German zoologists by the name of Heinz and Lutz Heck, who were brothers. The Nazis ordered the Heck brothers to create a new race of cattle based on Aurouchs, which are an extinct type of wild bull that existed hundreds of years ago.

"There was a thinking around at the time that you could selectively breed animals for Aryan characteristics, which were rooted in runes, folklore and legend," Gow says. "What the Germans did with their breeding program was create something truly primeval."

The result was a type of cow that was incredibly muscular and featured very large horns. In fact, the Nazis were so impressed with the results of the Lutz brothers' work that they used the cows in propaganda literature to convince people that the Nazi way was the wave of the future.

"The reason the Nazis were so supportive of the project is they wanted them to be fierce and aggressive," Gow states. "When the Germans were selecting them to create this animal they used Spanish fighting cattle to give them the shape and ferocity they wanted."

Gow was the only farmer in Britain who owned the Nazi-created cows. 

"The ones we had to get rid of would just attack you any chance they could. They would try to kill anyone. Dealing with that was not fun at all. They are by far and away the most aggressive animals I have ever worked with."

So what became of the cows? Dinner.

In the end, Gow says that meat produced from the violent beasts turned out to be "very tasty." Since Gow put the Nazi-bred cows down, peace has reigned supreme on his farm once again.

"Since they have gone it is all peaceful again," Gow says. "Peace reigns supreme on the farm. Despite these problems, I have no regrets at all. It has been a good thing to do and the history of them is fascinating."