What say you? What are your best explanations, legit, extraterrestrial, supernatural, conspiracy or otherwise?

They're saying heat, but I'm not buying that 3k cows all die at once.

https://www.agdaily.com/news/extreme-heat-and-humidity-kill-thousands-of-cattle-in-kansas/?utm_source=FbMain&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=

Ate some bad feed or something?

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/06/15/heat-humidity-kill-at-least-2000-kansas-cattle-state-says.html

Bill Gates.

Bloat, brought on by clover in hay bales dropped from an airplane?

At least that's what happened on Yellowstone.

That's a lot of beef gone.

Yeah I'm not buying heat and humidity.

Connected to the fires at food processing plants?

There are some juicy conspiracies out there these days, but this isn't one of them.

I'll bet not enough water sources/supply for the number of animals in that heat. They must have water to live.

Would have been a good time for those cattle to have a little more ear.

Anthrax?

fishag04 said:

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Would have been a good time for those cattle to have a little more ear.

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How many folks know what you mean ?! . I think it could have been prussic acid poisoning. If it was heat, then more ear darn sure would solve that problem !

fishag04 said:

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Would have been a good time for those cattle to have a little more ear.

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Then when it is 6 degrees out and blowing snow across the high plains with a -24 windchill can you take some of that ear back?

TAMUallen said:

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Yeah I'm not buying heat and humidity.

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We have had this type of weather up here before without the dead cattle. There has to be other factors at play.

In the southwest part of the state there are few ponds. A lot of watering gets done via wells with a windmill or solar panel pump. You have to check them EVERY DAY as they are known to fail and water in a round tank does not last long in this heat with very many head. We had a customer having to haul water last week as there wasn't enough wind to run the Aermotor to replace what the cows drank. We had abnormally calm weather in South Central/ SW Kansas last week.

Many of those ranches in SW Kansas actually operate feedlots. I wouldn't be surprised to see 3k head drop dead on a feedlot that holds 20k at a time. Factor in the ones I frequent have little to no shade structures.

10k cattle out of millions of head in Kansas, considering the landscape and production methods isn't that surprising. It's really hot and dry in SW Kansas.

Article says it got up to 108 degrees with little to no wind. I have no problem believing this story.

Lots of rumors, little in the way of fact. Kansas Department of Health and Environment is reported by Rueters to have confirmed 2,000 excess deaths, based on requests for carcass disposal. I can find the Rueters article, I cannot find the original KDoHE press release or statement.

There are 6,500,000 cattle in Kansas, so 2,000 would be a 0.03% loss rate.

The video in the OP's link is bullcrap, I'm surprised Ag Daily fell for it. It's been posted lots of times, mainly by 'social media influencers'. not by anyone in the industry or from Kansas. If you watch it to the end, it's pretty obvious the stacks of dead cattle are from a grass fire. You can even see the burned ground they are being stacked on.

The video also has no information. No time, no date, no location, no credit to cameraman. It overstates the death loss by 5x the official number. It could be in Uzbekistan for all we know.

I remember this exercise from the first day of AGLS 101. But the only casualty in that one was Bevo.

It was fertilizer in the water trough.

I met with one feeder in Kansas yesterday and confirmed some dead loss. Meeting with another this afternoon.

The guys I met with yesterday indicated they lost 250 or so in the heat. Said if someone lost 3,000 it was a gross mismanagement of the facility and they'd heard 2,600 at one yard and over 3,000 in another. However that was a great time to disparage their competition.

CanyonAg77 said:

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Lots of rumors, little in the way of fact. Kansas Department of Health and Environment is reported by Rueters to have confirmed 2,000 excess deaths, based on requests for carcass disposal. I can find the Rueters article, I cannot find the original KDoHE press release or statement.

There are 6,500,000 cattle in Kansas, so 2,000 would be a 0.03% loss rate.

The video in the OP's link is bullcrap, I'm surprised Ag Daily fell for it. It's been posted lots of times, mainly by 'social media influencers'. not by anyone in the industry or from Kansas. If you watch it to the end, it's pretty obvious the stacks of dead cattle are from a grass fire. You can even see the burned ground they are being stacked on.

The video also has no information. No time, no date, no location, no credit to cameraman. It overstates the death loss by 5x the official number. It could be in Uzbekistan for all we know.

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You mean to tell me the news is sensationallising something for attention? And it's not even true?

Get out of town!

Does anyone else find the choice of music in that video to be odd?

So has anyone confirmed this yet?

I guess you could say these poor Kansas ranchers are now all hat and no cattle.

We need common sense cattle control that only the government can provide.

Kansas is the hottest state in the country if you look at the evaporative cooling design maps.

I was at multiple feedyards this week. Some had minimal loss (50-60 head) others sustained significant loss (over 1,000 head).

Their thought are they got a decent rain then it jump over 103 and wind was blowing less than 2 mph. That combination did not allow for the cattle to cool off. It was interesting, their losses were both over 98% on their biggest cattle, and all lost were black hided cattle.

One guy had been at the same feedyard for over 40 years and he'd never seen anything like this.

I heard of yards claiming 2000-3000 loss but never witnessed those yards personally. The rough number they were hearing was 10,000 in Kansas alone. Some loss in Iowa as well but not to the same degree.

Don't we slaughter like 80k head a day?

This isn't an uncommon event, particularly in feedlots. It happened back in '95 and hit a much larger area extending up into Nebraska. Nighttime temperatures never got low enough for the cattle to recover. Hot days and warm nights will do it. It only takes 2-3 days of exposure to start having big losses. The '95 event has been the subject of lots of R&D and was the impetus for much of the shade structures you see in feedlots.

It's a rare thing to have happen. I had a set of cows in the pens waiting for a big truck 30 years ago. It got hot and still a little before 11am and it seemed like all at once we had 4 dead. Quickly opened the gates let them all out and the rest were fine. Any time we have cattle in the pens this time of year I remember that day

CanyonAg77 said:

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Lots of rumors, little in the way of fact. Kansas Department of Health and Environment is reported by Rueters to have confirmed 2,000 excess deaths, based on requests for carcass disposal. I can find the Rueters article, I cannot find the original KDoHE press release or statement.

There are 6,500,000 cattle in Kansas, so 2,000 would be a 0.03% loss rate.

The video in the OP's link is bullcrap, I'm surprised Ag Daily fell for it. It's been posted lots of times, mainly by 'social media influencers'. not by anyone in the industry or from Kansas. If you watch it to the end, it's pretty obvious the stacks of dead cattle are from a grass fire. You can even see the burned ground they are being stacked on.

The video also has no information. No time, no date, no location, no credit to cameraman. It overstates the death loss by 5x the official number. It could be in Uzbekistan for all we know.

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Thank you and well said. It was a perfect storm of bad things that happened. The thing no one mentions is how many were saved by the actions of the Feedyard and the consulting Vet. Water trucks and even some local fire trucks were brought in to spray the cattle to cool them down and they are continuing to do so. Also while I have no proof but I'm . certain these were Northern sourced cattle too, Nebraska, The Dakota's maybe even Minnesota who knows. These cattle don't tolerate heat very well. This has happened before too I think around 20 years ago but not certain.

Drako Mallfoy said:

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CanyonAg77 said:

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Lots of rumors, little in the way of fact. Kansas Department of Health and Environment is reported by Rueters to have confirmed 2,000 excess deaths, based on requests for carcass disposal. I can find the Rueters article, I cannot find the original KDoHE press release or statement.

There are 6,500,000 cattle in Kansas, so 2,000 would be a 0.03% loss rate.

The video in the OP's link is bullcrap, I'm surprised Ag Daily fell for it. It's been posted lots of times, mainly by 'social media influencers'. not by anyone in the industry or from Kansas. If you watch it to the end, it's pretty obvious the stacks of dead cattle are from a grass fire. You can even see the burned ground they are being stacked on.

The video also has no information. No time, no date, no location, no credit to cameraman. It overstates the death loss by 5x the official number. It could be in Uzbekistan for all we know.

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Thank you and well said. It was a perfect storm of bad things that happened. The thing no one mentions is how many were saved by the actions of the Feedyard and the consulting Vet. Water trucks and even some local fire trucks were brought in to spray the cattle to cool them down and they are continuing to do so. Also while I have no proof but I'm . certain these were Northern sourced cattle too, Nebraska, The Dakota's maybe even Minnesota who knows. These cattle don't tolerate heat very well. This has happened before too I think around 20 years ago but not certain.

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This. In no way is this some kind of nefarious act or conspiracy. The people involved are devastated.

No first hand information but doesn't look too suspicious to me.

Those cattle look like they are near finished.

At those weights 1300+ they really can't regulate heat all that well. Finished cattle today are about like chicken, not necessarily equipped for survival, now a days.

I've brought cattle from the midwest to relatively normal South Texas weather and they absolutely struggle and these are mid condition breeding cattle.


So to think fat cattle got hit with rain and then steamed up with unusually high temperatures and no breeze in facilities that aren't equipped for that type of challenge isn't hard to grasp.

A look at the feedlot "show" lists will tell us if those were finished calves already being contracted out to packers.

FeederFlash on YouTube also breaks it down fairly well.

Bingo!

At 1300# and the amount of feed they are pumping into them. They have trouble walking around, get winded, hot, etc.

Just like a 400# person that just ate a large pizza, then has to excercise. Probably overheated, heat stroke, heart attack, etc.

$240 Worth of Pudding said:

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Article says it got up to 108 degrees with little to no wind. I have no problem believing this story.

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I am well north of KS and its' been at 100 here this past week. Not saying that heat did it for sure, but its been legit hot in areas that don't have that kind of heat day in and day out.