What the hell would even cause that at a farm. Did a silo full of fertilizer go up or something? The article has no details.
An explosion big enough to kill 18000 cows would be basically impossible with anything commonly found on a farm. Maybe if you deliberately pumped the entire contents of your diesel storage tank into a silo of fertilizer then buried a bunch of detonators in it you might get something big enough... but why?
I grew up on a farm, not a dairy farm but a large wheat and wool farm. The biggest risk of an actual explosion would be from aerosolized grain dust being ignited by either a static discharge or equipment malfunction (failed bearing causing sparks/fire). But, the quantity of grain stored on a farm and the way it is moved would generally not be sufficient to end up with enough grain dust. However, 18000 cattle is a massive operation so they likely had grain storage facilities that were of an industrial scale. But, such an explosion would still be fairly localized (you can see this type of explosion on any video streaming site). To kill 18000 cattle, it would have to have covered many acres, perhaps something like a thermobaric warhead or a MOAB or similar fuel/air bomb could do it, but that's talking large military weapons.
That is why I was asking. I am similar with Farms and Ranches and I could not think of anything that could cause something like this. Its like they ordered 5 trucks full of gas (not diesel), parked them in the meddle of a massive heard in extremely close conditions (unlikely at best) then blew it up.
The smoke could be from all sorts of burning everything but still. That looks like a massive blast area and damage. If nothing else it looks like a actual attack of some sort.
That sort of smoke could be from burning tires, which are commonly used to hold down the tarps on silage pits or grain bunkers. Silage can also catch fire if it gets too hot, but it doesn't explode, it just smolders for ages and is really hard to put out. Hay can do similar, or wet grain... again they only smolder though. The 18000 dead cattle thing doesn't make sense for anything that would be on a farm though.
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