Thursday night’s storm was a boomer. As I laid in bed, I watched the sky through the windows as it was a constant flash of lightning. Next thing I knew it was morning! I obviously had missed the violent electrical storm. The rain guage measured 2.6 inches of rain but others not to far away got 6 inches in four hours. Later in the day we found two dead cows laying very close together in an open field. They were swelled up like tight toads which is characteristic of cows hit by lightning. One was a nursing mom so now we have a baby calf that needs to be bottle fed. In a large herd of cows it takes a little bit to figure out which hungry babe is searching for his mom.
You can see from the cow on the left the burn spot on her underside where lightning probably exited the body. We are fortunate it didn’t get the calf also.
Years ago-back in the late 70’s or early 80’s, we had six dairy cows hit by lightning. It is not a pretty sight to find.