‘Explosion kills 18,000 cows,’ reports say, and no questions asked

Recently, news broke regarding an explosion at a dairy farm in the Texas Panhandle, in which approximately 18,000 cows were killed (and one person critically injured). The Castro County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the explosion to Fox News Digital and stated that the cows were in a holding area before being brought in for milking when the blast occurred at the Southfork Dairy Farm in Dimmitt. The Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office is investigating the cause of the fire.

Castro County Sheriff Sal Rivera spoke to local media outlet KSAT-TV about the explosion and subsequent fire, saying that speculation centered around “what they call a honey badger, which is a vacuum that sucks the manure and water out and possibly that it got overheated and probably the methane and things like that ignited and spread out and exploded and the fire.”

I watch ABC and BBC News every day, and they have not reported this story at all. You would think that the death by explosion of over 18,000 cows would be a major story.

If not yet linked to Climate Change, Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Islamophobia, etc. then it is not fit to be propagated. I do see that https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/graphic-at-least-18000-cattle-killed-in-dairy-farm-explosion/ar-AA19K2oH reported it.

Other news:

The South Fork Dairy Farm is a dairy production facility in Dimmitt, Texas, located in Castro County. The county is the second largest dairy-producer in the United States, with more than 147,000,000 pounds (67,000,000 kg) of dairy being produced in February 2023, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.[1] The facility encompasses an area more than 2,100,000 square feet (200,000 m2).[2] The county houses 30,000 cattle according to the 2021 Texas Annual Dairy Review.[3]

In 2019, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality authorized the South Fork Dairy Farm to double the amount of cattle present at their facility, from 11,500 to 32,000. The permit also enabled the farm to increase manure production by 50%.[1] Immediately prior to the explosion, the facility was home to 19,000 cattle.[4]

The explosion and subsequent fire killed approximately 18,000 cattle, equivalent to around 20% of the cattle slaughtered in the United States on a regular day. It extinguished 3% of the dairy cattle population in Texas.[9][5] According to Castro County judge Mandy Gfeller, each cow was worth around $2,000 USD. She stated that the financial losses, excluding the destruction of equipment and buildings, could be worth tens of millions of dollars.[12] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Texas_dairy_farm_explosion

Quickly after the news was first reported, rumors started to circulate about what caused the fire. Rivera says they speculate a "honey badger” - a machine which he described as a "vacuum that sucks the manure and water out” - may have been the cause. However, it seems the sheriff misspoke, as there’s no piece of equipment called a “honey badger” in dairy. Instead, it’s called a “honey vac.” Rivera says the ongoing investigation will work to nail down what caused the fire to become so big and spread so quickly. He says initial thoughts are it was due to the insulation catching fire. .. One source told Farm Journal the manure vacuum that sucks manure from cow lanes could have ignited the fire, as he’s had it happen before on their dairy farm. In their case, the fire didn’t spread. Additional sources say if the explosion was big enough to catch any part of non-fire-resistant insulation on fire, then it would spread like wildfire across the entire building, which covers nearly 40 acres. That would also explain why the fire didn’t last long, because once the insulation was all burned, then the fuel to the fire would also be gone. Insulation not being fireproof would also explain why the building had so much black smoke. The building that caught fire was a recently built cross ventilated barn. ..With that many fans in a barn, it's possible once the fire spread so quickly, the hundreds of fans within the barn blew out the smoke, creating such a big smoke cloud that could be seen from miles away.

Started just after the fire, a lunch/meal train was created to help support the family and crews on the scene. Local businesses and community members have already signed up, with two weeks’ worth of meals spoken for. - https://www.agweb.com/news/livestock/dairy/what-we-now-know-about-what-caused-large-fire-texas-dairy-farm

Southfork Dairy Farm had been running for less than a year. - https://hoosieragtoday.news/texas-barn-fire-kills-18000-dairy-cattle/

The majority of the 18,000 cows that died in the fire were a mix of Holstein and Jersey cows, and made up almost 90% of the farm’s entire herd. The fire was the most catastrophic barn fire involving cattle to occur in the United States since the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) started monitoring such incidents in 2013. Over 6.5 million farm animals - mostly poultry - have perished in such fires over the past 10 years. - https://www.nationalworld.com/us/news/texas-dairy-explosion-fire-cause-south-fork-cows-died-what-happened-4103948

Actually, the Army finally broke the resistance of the Comanche by wiping out their horses.

The Army had been chasing the Comanche up and down the panhandle for several years.

They would capture a few of their horses with the Indians getting away. The Indians weren’t worried - they were good at stealing their horses back.

Finally, there was a big engagement where the Army captured around 1700-1800 horses. The Army then killed around 1500 of the horses - just east of Lake City Texas.

When the Comanche realized their horses were gone they surrendered and were marched back to the reservation in Oklahoma.

And remember this - horses are NOT native to North America. They were brought over by the Spanish. Indian life before horses was REALLY tough - it was called the ‘Dog’ days. North American Indians never had the wheel, they traveled by foot dragging everything they owned by travois pulled by dog or humans.

That’s a lot of chickens.

But it was only 1/6 of the chickens at that location (they have more) of that one company.

The top chicken rising state is Iowa, with around 54 million head at any one time. (Some sources say that’s just the layers, though, so the total may be much higher.)

https://www.ncentralpoultry.com/get-the-facts/

The Humane League estimate for Iowa is lower, but they come up with over 1.5 BILLION broilers alive in the US at any given time, plus layers. (Their analysis is a bit wonky, figuring broilers alive from broilers processed, and then rolling in layers without any adjustment, and not adding in the approximately 100 million (my estimate) “backyard” or pet chickens.)

https://thehumaneleague.org/article/how-many-chickens-are-in-the-world#:~:text=How%20many%20chickens%20are%20in%20the%20US%3F,US%20at%20any%20given%20time.

It all adds up to something around 1.8 and 1.9 billion chickens in the USA alone, and overall, that number is still growing.

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