Cows killed by lightning in Australia

Canberra, March 8 (IANS) An Australian farmer found six cows lying dead in a row in what experts have attributed to a lightning strike, the media reported on Thursday.

The animals were discovered next to a barbed-wire fence on a paddock in Queensland last week, a few days after a heavy storm, reports the BBC.

The cows' owner, Derek Shirley, said he was "stunned".

Sabrina Lomax, a livestock expert from Sydney University, said she believed all six animals had been touching the fence when they died.

"In these sort of freak accidents, it was just an inconvenient placement of the animals in regards to the (lightning) strike," the BBC quoted Lomax, an animal behaviour and welfare researcher, as saying on Thursday.

"They would have died instantly from a massive heart attack."

Shirley, whose farm is about 70 km south of Brisbane, said he initially thought the cows had been poisoned.

In 2016, more than 300 reindeer were killed in a lightning storm in Norway.