For most folks, July 4 is about celebrating independence and freedom. For Mt. Hermon dairy farmer Phillip Roberts, it was about losing 20 head of cattle to a single lightning strike.
While it was hot and dry on the eastern side of Washington Parish, it was anything but that just northwest of Mt. Hermon, as a large thunderstorm built and built until it broke loose.
Roberts, who lives on B.F. Roberts Road, told the Franklinton newspaper that, as he watched the storm come to life, he thought, “I hope I don’t lose a cow.”
Stories are plentiful of cattle being killed by lightning and, after a search of the internet, the 20 lost by Roberts are not all that out of the ordinary. Still, the loss of that many cows ready to be bred is both emotionally and financially taxing.
According to Roberts, it looked as if the cows had huddled under a large oak tree during the storm when lightning hit the tree, the electric charge ran through the trunk and into the wet ground, killing the cows. Each of the heifers weighed beween 800 and 900 pounds.
Roberts, who milks 315 cows, operates one of the parish’s larger dairy farms.
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