Texas dairy farm explosion kills 18,000 cows

[jsdemar]

I thought article said they were in a barn??

Udderly ridiculous. Couldn’t moooove in there!

 

[Funkworks]

When "Holy Smokes!" and "Holy Cow!" are equally appropriate reactions.

 

[rharshberger]

I thought article said they were in a barn??

Dairy barns are not normal barns as we think of them, 4 walls and a roof, lots of times they are just a roof overhead, which would channel the smoke keeping it close to ground level. Older dairies I have been to have traditional barns with walls and roofs but all the newer mega-dairies the "barn" is just a roof overhead with paths down either side for the feed mixer/dispenser machine to put feed into the feeding troughs. When the cows are being milked the "barn" is empty and a tractor with a rubber scraper (lots of times it a tractor tire cut in half) and lots of water is sent down the aisle to muck out the poo, which is then sent to a special processing pond (lagoon) where the solids are separated from the liquids and the liquids are used as fertilizer (maybe the solids, but not sure). At the end of the barns are gates that open into a "yard" or large area the cattle can roam around in. Dairy cattle are very much creatures of habit, and after a short time learn their part in the milking and moving about the farm process.

 

[Peartree]

There is a legend at my old firehouse about a crew that hit a deer on the way to a call, threw it on the truck and cleaned it after the call was over. Of course, the responsible parties were conveniently long retired or deceased when the story was told. It is believable....

Entirely believable. Around here, the only offense would've been that the deer wasn't properly tagged and reported to the DNR.

I've had friends witness a deer hit on the freeway, stopped, and had the state patrol trooper (who came to make an accident report) legally tag the deer. As long as it's fresh, why waste it?

 

[Cape Byron]

The true story has been released:

 

[Peartree]

Lest anyone get the wrong idea about my sentiments, I am truly horrified at the scale and level of suffering those cows endured. This should be a national scandal which changes how we treat the animals in our factory farms. Sadly it will more likely be just a temporary bump in the news cycle.

But I am also a mean hand with gallows humor and in general a terrible man for a pun in any circumstance.

Other than there being a lot of cows in the (really big) barn, no one has made any claims of mistreatment. Dairy cows are the primadonnas of the livestock world. Any discomfort translates to reduced production so they get individualized custom diets, and even soft beds. Beef cattle are much different.

How I feel about factory farming is another issue entirely. But between the horrible economics of dairy farming, sprawling suburbia, and suburbanites not wanting "smelly" livestock operations next door, the family farm with 40 head, or even 100 head, is long gone. Last I heard, it's almost impossible to break even with less than 1000 cows.

It wasn't too many years ago that farm papers reported that milk prices (for farmers selling) were essentially unchanged since 1940. But everything else costs a lot more.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

I still can't process the number 18K. That many cows in one small area?

You can see it on google maps/earth. It's not "small".

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

I still can't process the number 18K. That many cows in one small area?

These are metric cows. Each one is a mooer, so we are looking for the area occupied by 18 kilomooers, and I read somewhere that’s roughly 26 football fields. And in terms of money lost, each cow is $2,000, so the total in metric measurements is 36 megabucks.

 

[bad_idea]

Are these metric cows spherical?

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

Are these metric cows spherical?

Yes. In a vacuum.

 

[tsmith1315]

each cow is $2,000, so the total in metric measurements is 36 megabucks.

You lost me in the deer conversion.

 

[KenECoyote]

How many school busses long was the facility?

Any mention of China "weather balloons" in the area?