The cow which was rescued in central Victoria on Friday sadly died over the weekend, but its Kyneton owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, could not be more grateful for the CFA crews who gave her the best shot at survival.

The animal was found submerged up to its neck in mud after heavy rainfall and a local vet was called to the scene to sedate the cow so emergency crews could safely dig around and fit a sling underneath it.

Despite the heroic efforts to save her, the shock of the cow's ordeal soon set in and she was euthanised on Saturday afternoon after she stopped drinking water and couldn't move her head.

"When her rescuers hauled her up to high ground, she was on her side," the farmer said.

"They propped her up so she was sitting upright.

"She never managed to move from that position.

"She tried once or twice to stand up on Thursday night, but she couldn't."

The farmer told the Bendigo Advertiser that before the rescue even started, both attending vets told him that the cow would be unlikely to survive the trauma of her ordeal.

"It has been a relentlessly wet winter and the lanes and gateways which the herd walks through daily have in places entirely lost their heavy clay soil structure through this daily churning, which has turned into 'quickmud' with powerful suction going down at least half a metre," the farmer said.

"Where this heifer was bogged is the lowest point around.

"This has never happened in other years, and even this year the herd, including the youngest calves, has been walking through this mud daily without getting stuck all winter."

The Kyneton man said even though the rescue mission was not able to save a life, because of the rescuers it had still been an uplifting event for him.

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"I was and am in awe of what they did. A team of eleven men, including two vets, from Kyneton, Tylden, and far-away Arthur's Creek and possibly beyond, walked out of their jobs for the day last Thursday to help a very ordinary young animal, not a prize-winning bull or anything," he said.

"They spent the best part of a day to assemble at the site and take very thoughtful care to gently extricate her from Kyneton's unlikely version of a cosmic black hole.

"The amount of advanced training, discipline, and organisation on show was impressive.

"The atmosphere was like a team of surgeons cooperating on a complex operation."

The farmer said the equipment the rescue teams used was "ingenious" with two trucks on site including a water truck with a long hose with a wand at the end with a few irrigation holes. This was inserted into the mud to break up the suction forces.

The team also had sturdy plastic mats which they assembled into a "pier" so they could approach the cow without falling in themselves, also equipped with cradles and long aluminium shepherd's crooks and straps.

"I wondered why there needed to be so many in the rescue team, until I watched them assume a sort of tug-of-war line and pull the cow uphill about 40 metres," he said.

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The very grateful Kyneton man said he came away seeing the CFA rescuers and volunteers as a "different species".

"These men sacrificed their day to try to help an animal far away they didn't know and would never see again," he said.

"They told me that sometimes they assemble and set off on a rescue mission only to have the rescue called off en route and other times they arrive to find the animal already freed, or already dead.

"These all too real circumstances in which they do their work just magnifies their status - they are collectively like Superman in CFA uniforms."

"The CFA is all about sucking up the smoke, the heat, and the potential danger of fires, with the humility to sacrifice if not their lives at least their day to try to save the life of an animal."

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