Borrowed from http://www.clker.com/clipart-782130.html
This is the only comment I have read of the cattle
die off that makes sense. We have driven by such places and you really
do smell them for miles and miles away.
There were times when we had to have a few cows in the corral and it
gets messy fast in wet weather. I was always after hubby to keep it
draining but it is hard to do. You drain and it still fills up when the
cows move around and mess with the drainage.
Thank goodness we always had plenty of land to let them graze and if
it got wet they could find high ground. There were times though even
the high ground was wet but at least not muddy up the the knees!
We are all so "on alert " which is a good thing to be now days.
Maybe it really was bad guys doing bad things but this post was one of
the most common sense ones I have seen about the die off.
Love
Ranchmama
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This was on Dr. Mercola's website talking about food shortages.
Snaggly
Joined On 5/13/2020 7:11:18 AM
Hate to break up the theories of the dead cattle, but they died because
of the weather. That area of KS had received more than 4 inches of rain
in a couple of hours. Feedlots are made for water to run off into catch
ponds. Too much water and the pens of these cattle soak up the manure.
The manure they are standing on soaks up the water and causes heat in
the hot sun. It starts to boil. The feed yard workers cannot get the wet
manure out of the pens fast enough to dry out the pens. The next day it
was over 100 degrees. Black cattle standing on hot manure was causing a
heating effect. The cattle were slogging through wet manure to get to
the water tank. There are usually over 100 head per pen and only one
water tank.
The temperature only got down to 87 degrees that night with over 70%
humidity. The cattle could not cool off or get enough water. This was a
perfect storm in a sense. Hot cattle, short of water, hot wet pen
conditions, high humidity, very hot temperatures, no cooling night and
add into that very low wind, an uncommon occurrence in western Kansas
and you had the perfect storm for cattle deaths. It did not happen at
only one feed yard, but multiple yards in many counties. The number is
way above 10,000 head dead. When you have over 200,000 head of cattle at
one feed yard, you can't clean the pens fast enough or get enough water
to the cattle.
The water tanks are free flowing but could not keep up with the amount
of water needed by these cattle in these conditions. In a sense these
cattle were in a sauna condition. Feed yards are not the best conditions
normally for cattle. But Americans diet is all about protein. Buy beef
from a Grass fed cattle guy and you won't have to worry about hot pens,
cattle standing on hot manure or cattle die ing in boiling conditions.
But just know, Feed yards are NOT out to abuse cattle, they are in the
business of making money, but many, not all, do their best to treat
their animals as humanely as possible.
