Cattle feedlot

during our last big drive we passed by a lot of weird things. deserted buildings. empty desert. forgotten statues and even an entire town, abandoned not too long ago. usually we just drove by, saw something weird, stopped, took some pictures and drove on again. sometimes that was a little scary, as we had no clue whether the places were really deserted, or whether we were allowed to walk around, etc (not that we did anything illegal, just looking, from a distance.. :) ). so, sometimes it was just a drive-by shooting, like above. we would turn around, and from the window of the car i would take some pictures... here, we suddenly saw literally thousands of cows on a very small place. something i never have seen in my life. just alongside the road. the cows were obviously curious when we drove by slowly and took some pics, but i didnt dare getting out of the car and inspecting it from a little closer. 

i just looked it up. this is a "cattle feedlot", and this particular one, named "superior cattle feeders" (the name alone, yuck!), houses 80,000 cows. 80,000!!! can you imagine? i actually had never heard of a feedlot, but wikipedia tells me that the cows here most likely have spend the first months of their lives on a normal pasture, eating grass, until they are around 300 kgs. then they are transferred to such a feedlot and are fed mostly corn by-producsts, which makes them gain weight (and especially fat) very quickly; about 180 kgs in the 3-4 months they are in the feedlot. when they are fat enough, they are brought to the slaughterhouse...

we dont eat too much meat. i guess thats better for both the cows and us...