Why Did So Many Cows Drop Dead in Kansas?
Our food supply took another hit. The video of what happened is terrible and hurts our protein supply. Did high temperatures cause this cow mass casualty? Or is something sinister going on?
From Fox News to NPR, mainstream media quickly concludes that a recent heat wave caused the death of 10K cattle in a small area of Kansas.
But is that what really happened?
Before we look at potential answers to this question, let’s ensure you know what happened.
Reports say somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 cattle died of extreme heat in southwest Kansas. This video of thousands of dead cows lying side by side went viral over the past 24 hours and had people talking.
I’m seeing anecdotal reactions from people with farming experience and current farmers saying they don’t think heat alone would kill this many cattle all at once.
Many farmers think the storyline doesn’t add up ultimately.
Here are a few examples:
This farmer said:
Someone else with farming experience said:
Okay, So What Really Happened?
Since I am not claiming to be a farmer nor an expert on what happened, I decided to see if I could find someone with the expertise to talk about what happened with this Kansas cattle herd and explore the possible causes. Since so many farmers are questioning the “heat and humidity” narrative, I found a video that you may find helpful.
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Check out this informative and compelling video they published on June 16 addressing the mass cattle casualties on this Kansas farm. For those who cannot watch the 28-minute video - below it you will find some notes on the highlights. The notes are points made by the speaker on the video.
— Progressive Farmer has done some solid research on this story and they tend to have “some pretty good resources” when it comes to gathering information. They estimate as many as 10,000 cattle died.
— Even 3,000 sounds like a high number even for a heat wave of this magnitude
— The “natural theory,” or heat wave, is caused by a lack of cooling at night.
— Florida, Texas, and several other states with high cattle farming counts and experiencing even HIGHER temperatures are NOT facing mass cattle deaths. This makes the heat theory seem “a little far fetched.”
— There are a lot of feed lots in the Ulysses Kansas area.
— The cows are being fed grains in feed lots. In extreme heat, farmers change up the cattle’s diet. The toxicity of fescue can harm cattle. What were these cows eating?
— This is not a widespread issue - only located in one spot of Kansas, while the heat and drought is widespread. This makes it “a little more suspicious.”
— You would think a farmer would see the stress on the animals. One theory is that a feed lot might abuse animals for insurance claims or mismanagement.
— All the cows seem to be in a tight geographical range. Again - this raises suspicion since the heat wave is widespread in multiple states.
— Mismanagement is NOT the likely cause (opinion from this speaker) because multiple feed lots were affected. So, there were multiple feed lots who lost cattle but these feed lots were close together in one small geographical area. Not common for multiple feedlot managers to make the same mistake at the same time.
— He talks about the environmental theory. He gets into the La Nina weather patterns. Soil degradation. Water retention issues. There is an aquifer that radical environmentalists could be protecting by intentionally killing cattle to conserve the water. What if the water in the aquifer became toxic? We don’t know.
— The Department of Homeland Security secretly briefed Kansas legislators in 2020 about foreign governments trying to get proprietary information about business and agriculture assets in the state. “Domestic terrorists” are also possible.
— Mysterious drones were spotted over the aquifer.
— He’s not a fan of feedlots. The animals are close together which creates heat. But there are feed lots in warmer states and this mass dying of cattle has not been a factor.
— Kansas has been in severe drought since the beginning of 2022. The drought could lead to problems with the Ogallala aquifer.
— Cattle mutilations have been occurring in the U.S. since the 1970s. He cites an incident of 58 cows suspiciously dying in North Dakota. “it was unnatural.” "
— “Monkey wrenchers” are environmental extremists who go out and kills cattle because they are freaking out over water, and then claim their deeds are for animal rights. These people react in criminal ways when they see extreme heat, drought, and cattle receiving lots of water. These activists take matters into their own hands and will sabotage things - like 1,000 acres of corn in Bay County because the corn was going to feed cattle. Extremists are also known to poison cattle.
— Government interference (foreign or domestic) of the food supply chain. Some think the powers that shouldn’t be could sabotage the meat industry to get people to eat fake meat. “The fake meat companies have the monkey wrenching groups, they don’t need the government to do that for them.”
— Suspicious food factory fires this year. A lot of fires in the great plains that have killed off cows and pastureland.
— Financial stresses. With grain costs going up, if you are unable to offset those costs and you have livestock, an insurance claim could solve this. But he doesn’t think that’s what happened in this Kansas event.
— Bovine Respiratory Disease? Again, it wouldn’t kill off so many cattle all at once without first being noticed. Not likely.
— Biological weapons. “Not something we’ve seen in a while.”
— This could have something to do with DHS concerns in Kansas and the drones spotted over the Ogallala Aquifer.
“There is definitely something weird going on here.”
Wrap Up
The claim that it was heat and drought alone doesn’t hold water (pun intended) when you consider how many other states with more cattle than Kansas are experiencing severe heat and drought - yet have not experienced an event of mass cow deaths. And the fact this happened in several different feed lots would rule out incompetence, as each lot is managed by different people. All the managers mismanaging the cows at the same time seems implausible.
After viewing what the gentleman in the video had to say with the various theories and facts about the case - he seems to think some form of sabotage could be what caused so many cows to die suddenly - and the perpetrators are likely motivated by environmental extremism.
What do you think happened?
This is also 3 months after the FDA gave the green light for the marketing of gene-edited beef cattle.
Coincidentally, Aspire Food Group new cricket plant in London, Ontario is now ready to produce 9000 metric tons of crickets annually for human and pet consumption.