Approximately 18,000 cows were killed in an explosion at a Texas dairy farm earlier this week, according to local authorities.
One person was critically injured as a result of the explosion at South Fork Dairy, which is located close to Dimmitt.
Authorities believe that the facility's machinery may have set methane gas ablaze.
Between 2018 and 2021, fires in the US claimed the lives of about three million agricultural animals.
According to the Castro County Sheriff's Office, a report of a fire at the farm was made at approximately 19:21 on Monday (00:21 GMT Tuesday).
A massive column of black smoke can be seen rising from the earth in pictures published by the Sheriff's Office, BBC reported.
One trapped person had to be rescued and rushed to the hospital in critical condition when police and emergency workers arrived on the scene.
The precise number of cows lost to fire and smoke is still unknown, although the Sheriff's Office told the BBC that an "estimated 18,000 head of cattle" had died.
Sheriff Sal Rivera told the local news source KFDA that the majority of the cattle had perished after the fire extended to a location where cows were kept before being transported to a milking station and then a holding pen.
He was cited as stating, "There are some that survived." "There's some that are probably injured to the point where they'll have to be destroyed."
According to Rivera, who spoke to KFDA, the "honey badger," which he described as a "vacuum that sucks the manure and water out," may have been the source of the fire's beginning.
"Possibly [it] got overheated and probably the methane and things like that ignited and spread out and exploded," he said.
The Animal Welfare Institute, based in Washington, DC, claimed in a statement to the BBC that, if accurate, a death toll of 18,000 cows would be the "by far" deadliest barn fire to affect cattle since it started compiling statistics in 2013.
"We hope the industry will remain focused on this issue and strongly encourage farms to adopt common-sense fire safety measures," said Allie Granger, policy associate for AWI's farm animal program. "It is hard to imagine anything worse than being burned alive."
About 6 million hens and 7,300 cows were among the nearly 6.5 million farm animals destroyed in barn fires since 2013, according to the AWI.
Nearly 3 million farm animals died in fires between 2018 and 2021, with 1.76 million hens dying in the six deadliest fires during that time.
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