Huge Texas Dairy Farm Fire Kills 18,000 Cows

At least 18,000 cows were killed in a Texas dairy farm after a huge blast and fire on Monday evening, and the fire could have caused the largest cattle killing ever in US history, Rick Jervis reported for USA TODAY.

Photo Insert: Officials were stunned at the scale of livestock death left behind: 18,000 head of cattle perished in the fire at the South Fork Dairy farm near Dimmitt, Texas.

The fire spread quickly through the holding pens, where thousands of dairy cows crowded together waiting to be milked were trapped.

Officials were stunned at the scale of livestock death left behind: 18,000 head of cattle perished in the fire at the South Fork Dairy farm near Dimmitt, Texas – or nearly three times the number of cattle led to slaughter each day across the US.

"It's mind-boggling," Dimmitt Mayor Roger Malone said of the number of bovine deaths. "I don’t think it's ever happened before around here. It's a real tragedy."

It was the biggest single-incident death of cattle in the country since the Animal Welfare Institute, a Washington-based animal advocacy group, began tracking barn and farm fires in 2013.

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