‘Mindboggling’: 18,000 cows killed in US farm explosion

The fire broke out in Castro County, an area that is open prairie land dotted with dairy farms and cattle ranches. PHOTOS: CASTRO COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT/FACEBOOK

An explosion that caused a fire at a dairy farm in the US state of Texas on Monday has killed a staggering 18,000 cows.

That figure is nearly three times the number of cattle led to slaughter each day across the United States, according to a report by USA Today.

Mr Roger Malone, the mayor of Dimmitt which is the town closest to the South Fork Dairy farm, described the number of deaths as “mindboggling”, adding that it was a “real tragedy”.

The fire broke out in Castro County, an area that is open prairie land dotted with dairy farms and cattle ranches.

The county’s top executive, County Judge Mandy Gfeller, said a malfunction in a piece of equipment at the South Fork farm may have caused an explosion that led to the fire.

Texas officials are still investigating the real cause of the incident, she said.

Mr Malone said he was not aware of any previous blaze at the facility. He added that the dairy had opened in the area just about three years ago, and there were 50 to 60 people working at the farm.

The owners of South Fork Dairy could not be reached for comment.

The blaze is said to have spread rapidly through the holding pens on Monday, where thousands of dairy cows were crowded together and waiting to be milked. The fire was subdued that evening, after which the shocking scale of the incident came to light.

One dairy farm worker was rescued and taken to hospital. As at Tuesday, the worker was said to be in a critical but stable condition.

There were no other human casualties.

Pictures of the incident were posted on social media and showed a large plume of black smoke. There were also images of charred cows that were saved from the structure.

The 18,000 cows that died are said to have represented about 90 per cent of the farm’s total herd. Each was valued at around US$2,000 (S$2,650).

This means the company’s losses in livestock alone could stretch into tens of millions of dollars, Ms Gfeller said.

The incident is also set to affect milk production.

Texas is the fourth largest producer, with an estimated 625,000 cows producing almost 7.5 billion kilos of milk a year, according to the Texas Association of Dairymen.

Castro County itself is the second-highest producing county in Texas. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the county has 15 dairies producing about 67,000kg of milk a month.

This was not the first time large numbers of cattle have died in Texas. However, rarely do so many perish from a single fire.

A blizzard in December 2015 killed around 20,000 cattle, according to the Texas Association of Dairymen. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey drowned thousands of cattle in south-east Texas.

Monday’s fire was the biggest single-incident death of cattle in the US since American animal advocacy group Animal Welfare Institute began tracking such barn and farm fires in 2013.

It also easily surpassed the previous high in 2020, when a fire at an upstate New York dairy farm killed about 400 cows, according to Ms Allie Granger, a policy associate at the institute.

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.