Based on the size of an average adult cow, 18,000 cattle standing 3 to 4 feet apart could cover 26 football fields.
Gfeller said malfunctioning farm equipment may have caused the explosion. Texas fire officials were investigating.
Castro County is the second-highest-producing county in Texas, with 15 dairies yielding 148 million pounds of milk a month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
You can thank environmental regulations for pushing these dairies out in Texas.
North of Austin and SW of Fort Worth they were high producing milk area.
Late 1990’s they tested the water and they decided to start regulating the elements in the water
They forced these small dairies to sell to the government, close down or move.
Smaller dairies couldn’t keep up w/ the regulations thus you get this super large dairy places where they house 18,000 cows.
Regulations actually make a worse environmental issue b/c it makes BIGGER farms that are out of scale and they actually pollute MORE than a smaller in scale local farm.
They can’t use mass grave per Texas Commission regulations, so where and how will they dispose of all of these cows?
There are a lot of things that have to be done to a remains but can the remains be used for dog food.
You have a few other things that they feed, some grass additives and other things.
These are just milking cows and sometimes they do go dry.
If you are finishing beef or milking your grain rations come in.
180,000 lbs of grain a DAY was used to feed these animals.
This grain was being transported by rail to this farm.