Dairy farmer Jared Blackwelder had a shocking experience on Saturday after a thunderstorm hit his organic farm near Cabool, Missouri.
Early in the morning, around 4 a.m., he went out to do his usual milking routine. As he was coming back from the field, a lightning bolt struck so close he could feel it, and it was so bright he could hardly see. “It felt like fire came down the fences,” he told the Springfield News-Leader, according to the Daily Mail.
Later that day, when he went back to the field, he saw something terrible.
“I went down over the hill and seen them laying there,” Blackwelder said, welling over with emotion.
“They were just piled on top of each other. They were huddled up, trying to get out of rain.”
The cows had likely huddled together in the rainstorm when they were struck.
Thirty-two of Blackwelder’s roughly 150-head herd had been wiped out in a single blow, a loss he estimates at roughly $60,000.
A veterinarian confirmed that lightning was the cause of death, adding that he’d never seen more than six cows killed in a lightning strike.
Though Blackwelder has tried to take the loss in his stride, the pragmatic farmer admits it has struck an emotional blow.
“It’s not like they are pets. But the ones I’m milking, I’ve raised every one of them,” he said.