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east central MN | To All,
I am the son of the farmer to which this happened. I just moved home in September so I was not here for all the events but for the record, there was a skid loader this summer that wouldn't charge the battery so when bagging haylage dad was changing the battery from the tractor to the skid loader daily to charge it. One day he dropped the battery and it cracked, leaking out all the acid and rendering the battery useless so, in a hurry, he set it to the side and forgot about it. Fast forward 6 months. I mix feed at 4am while we milk and went to open the new haylage bag and caught part of the battery (that was buried in the snow) and got it in the mixer. We noticed that there were some strange pieces a couple of hours later and removed the feed and called our vet to consult. About 1 week later we started seeing the signs of lead poisoning. We have been dumping the milk since before we saw any signs and between Christmas day and new years day we lost 54 cows....all had symptoms that were horrible to watch and deal with. Currently the remaining cows (16 or so) cannot be milked or sold for slaughter for up to 9 months if they survive. We have dried off all who are carrying calves and continue to watch/see symptoms. The good news is that none of the dry cows are contaminated. This has been a huge loss financially and emotionally for us and we only had 1/4 of the battery in the feed available to the cows for less then 4 hours. Also to this point insurance says we have no coverage for such an incident so if anyone has any good information on that front we could use it. We have since been ok' d to sell milk from any new cows purchased and we have found a small herd to start with. Thanks to all for the concerns.
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Battery acid and cows bad thing happened
