Wayne Zolmer and his son, Todd, received a shock earlier this week when they discovered that 11 cows and a bull died in a lightning strike on their farm near Alberta Beach, Alta., early Sunday morning.
Zolmer said the Shorthorn cattle were bunched up in a hillside pasture and weren’t near fences or other metal infrastructure.
The Zolmers run 60 to 65 head, and there were 29 cows and calves in the affected pasture.
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The dead cows left eight calves without mothers.
Zolmer said his son owned eight of the cows, and he will try to replace them. The cattle were not insured.
He said their veterinarian was familiar with cattle killed by lightning but had never seen anything of this magnitude.
It was a short but intense electrical storm, he added, with three or four big flashes of lightning.
“It’s just one of those things that happens. Nothing you can do about it,” Zolmer said.
“Mother Nature went on a tear that night.”
