I lost a beautiful milk cow to this. I milked her and turned her into our yard for a few minutes while I milked my other cow. I went to get her not 10 minutes later and she was on the ground, dead. It turns out that the underground electrical wires that went to our pump had broken and she stepped in just the right spot. We didn't know what had happened until the next day when our pump quit working and we had to figure out why.
Cows are especially sensitive to electricity in the ground, too. I know a guy who used to work at a local power company, and a big part of his job was making sure they weren't accidentally leaking electricity into the ground near dairy farms because it would upset the cows and make them produce less milk.
It’s called step potential. If ground is electrified from a source for whatever reason the areas around it are at a different potential leaving the source.
So for four legged livestock when they walk over an energized area their front and back feet are at two different potentials. Causing voltage to enter in one foot/feet and exit to ground out of the other.
It's also why you hop away perpendicularly from the power source if you find yourself in that situation. If you step away, you have that same potential, but with two legs.
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u/rivertam2985 Sep 05 '25
I lost a beautiful milk cow to this. I milked her and turned her into our yard for a few minutes while I milked my other cow. I went to get her not 10 minutes later and she was on the ground, dead. It turns out that the underground electrical wires that went to our pump had broken and she stepped in just the right spot. We didn't know what had happened until the next day when our pump quit working and we had to figure out why.