An Udder Disaster at Minnesota Dairy

Something was spooking Keith and LeAnn Cook’s cows to the point that some nights they couldn’t be milked.

“They were wild,” Cook said.

It took two years and a jolt to a creamery worker to determine that electricity, leaking from power lines through the steel walls and metal pipes in the barn, was giving the herd two- or three-volt charges every time Cook brought them in for milking.

LeAnn Cook said the stray voltage problem drove her family out of the dairy business.

So the Cooks sued the Goodhue County Cooperative Electrical Assn. They won a $405,000 judgment in June. The co-op’s insurance company, which plans an appeal, says the stray voltage problems weren’t the co-op’s fault.