Police were forced to halt traffic on the motorway after a cow escaped from a nearby dairy.

North West Motorway Police were called into action at around 11am on Sunday, August 12 after several motorists reported the wandering Friesian on the westbound carriageway of the M65.

Traffic was briefly halted on the M65 after a cow wandered onto the carriageway

Officers updated motorists with a series of tongue-in-cheek tweets as the incident progressed.

They said: “Patrols on scene with a cow in lane three on M65 between junction six and seven, at present its (sic) not responding to police requests to moooove on, updates to follow.”

Darren Clarke, 36, a warehouse worker from Accrington, was bewildered as he passed the cow, who was crossing the hard shoulder at the time.

He said: “I joined at junction seven and saw traffic and thought there may be a crash or something - then I saw a cow in the fast lane.

“Someone stopped their car to try and move it off the road but the cow just kept running away from him.

“We went past it as it was in the hard shoulder then rang the police.”

Lancashire police confirmed that they received multiple reports of highway disruption as a result of a cow moving across all lanes of the M65 at around 11am on Sunday, August 12.

No-one was injured as a result of the incident.