I am a bit skeptical. 18000 head of dairy cattle is a big operation. There should have been people all over the place. Especially in the milking barn. Operations that big are milking 24 hours a day. Yet only one human injured? I wonder about the methane thing too. How did O2 get into the tank? I think maybe more to the story is going to come out.





Plenty of big dairies in the panhandle's of TX and OK also western KS and eastern N.M. Our milk supply won't take a big hit over it

I agree Danny. Doesn’t make sense that only one person was hurt. I would have guessed 10-15 employees with that many head. Something is off

Danny if their milking with robotics. Could easily explain only one person on site.

Mac

Just Wow

With the current dairy market, that’s about 30 M loss just in cattle loss. One of the dairy industry guys I work with says the total loss is $200 M minimum. I don’t know what type of setup they had in the barn but robotics and such would definitely raise that number

We have a small herd but I did some quick math. If they avg 80 lbs per day, they make as much milk in 1 day as we do in an entire year. That’s a lot of milk

I could care less about the cows. But hopefully the woman recovers quickly.

Will have to wait for the full report. 18000 cows milke even 2 times per day is 36K milkings per day. Even 1 84 stall rotory parlor can handle 450 cows per hour with 4-5 milking team members. If they need to shut down 1 hour per day to clean the on rotory parlor milks about 10K of cows. So two of those. If 3x milking you would need 3 84 stall rotory parlors and there would be 10-20 persons on site let alone people hauling milk feeding etc. etc. Each robot can handle about 70 cows 3 times per day so 18k of cows would need over 250 robots. That would be a huge space. We don't know if these were all lactating cows or milking and dry cows and or calves or heifers. Far too little information as of yet. As to subsidized by the government. Very large operations get very few direct subsidies for milk, especially at those sizes. The subsidies do come through for the subsidized crops that cows are fed, corn, barley etc. The last two years there have been hardly any subsidy payments as prices have been above trigger levels.

Today it costs about $20 per hundred weight to produce milk and prices are down. This area of Texas has had real recent and rapid expansion which means there could be a lot of debt to cover along with buying all the more expensive feeds while prices are falling near the break even levels.

Bryce

I talked to my Afi rep today and He said he was in that barn 3 weeks ago. They milked in 2 110 stall rotory parlors. He didn’t say if they were on 2x or 3x. The facility was only a few years old and could house up to 22,000 milking cows. He didn’t say whether it contained dry cows or not
The owner has 7 farms and milks approximately 60,000 cows

I try to not wade in on stuff like this. But feeling sympathy for the investors in mega size dairy operations that have destroyed countless family operations by milk marketing agreements is not part of my value set. I feel sorry for all of the workers and pray for the injured. I even feel sorry for the cows! But the merchants of greed that justify their actions by the religion of economies of scale cannot go bankrupt one day too soon for me. If you buy Great Value brand milk at Wal-Mart you support these wolves masquerading as human beings. Food production in this country needs to be decentralized for any number of reasons including socio-economic and environmental. Covid should have revealed that any system that has all the efficiencies wrung out of it will not be very resilient in the face of adversity. And this is coming from a guy with a degree in Ag Econ.

I'm not sure any business that grows to monster size is driven by greed lotta different reasons. There was a thread on greed here bit ago very interesting

Hi Dale. Good post

I still say there is a Paul Harvey version of that story. 18000 head of livestock and one human causality aint adding up.

My feelings too. Milk just ain't that explosive.

Thank you for the info.

At this point they're saying "overheated equipment". Maybe a green energy skidsteer battery?

Smoke inhalation is what killed the cows. That's the rumor from the street.

What does that mean? Its rural panhandle TX. Mile after mile of flat no people country.

I have been to the Texas panhandle. My brother is a dairy farmer and he said smoke inhalation is what killed the cows. I understand what you are trying to say, Danny. Hopefully that makes sense.

Explosion caused possibly by methane gas????