Animal health officials and police took him from the Skanda Vale religious community on Thursday after a day-long stand off.

They were forced to obtain a court warrant after being refused entry by monks when they arrived in the morning.

Police had to physically remove some Hindu worshippers who spent the day praying and chanting on the ground around Shambo's pen.

The monks, who lost a legal campaign to save Shambo at the Court of Appeal this week, said their temple had been "desecrated".

The Welsh Assembly Government wanted the six-year-old Friesian put down after it tested positive for bovine tuberculosis three-months-ago.

Shambo was put on a trailer at Skanda Vale, in Carmarthenshire, west Wales, and taken to an abattoir.

The bullock's final moments in his pen were broadcast to people watching the webcam on the Skanda Vale website, nicknamed Moo Tube.

Frank Crouwel, the managing director of Network Webcams, said his company had not seen such a volume of traffic since Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix premiered, when 76,000 people logged on.

Men were seen moving into the pen before a message was put up in the empty enclosure reading: "The Welsh Assembly Government has finally desecrated our temple and taken Shambo away to be slaughtered."