Heat stress has reportedly killed thousands of beef cattle in the US state of Kansas.

A video widely shared online purports to show hundreds of dead cattle gathered for disposal at the side of a farm road. Some local industry estimates state that the number of dead could be 10,000 head of cattle.

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Temperatures in the area recently reached 42 degrees Celsius with a high humidity and little to no wind to cool the animals. The baking conditions persisting overnight gave the animals no time to cool down resulting in overheating, heat stress and death.

Speaking to local news, Scarlett Hagins from the Kansas Livestock Association, said she didn’t have exact numbers but she did know that cattle into the thousands had died from heat stress near Ulysses in Kansas.

Corbitt Wall, a cattle analyst with National Beef Wire, said he had heard from two non-media sources about the extent of the Kansas losses – and noted that there was industry frustration that despite such extensive losses, the US beef futures market still fell on Monday.

AJ Tarpoff, from Kansas State University Agriculture Extension said: “Heat stress doesn't happen all at one time. Cattle accumulate heat during the day, and then over the nighttime hours, it takes four to six hours for them to dissipate that heat. As long as we have a cooling effect at night, cattle can mostly handle the heat. Where we run into issues is where we have two to four days in a row of minimal nighttime cooling, and we start the day with the heat load we accumulated the day before still there.

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"The second week of June is when, historically, we start to see this, and I think a lot of it has to do with the hair coat. Cattle can adapt to almost any environment on earth, but they need time. At this point in the season, a lot of them have not fully shed that winter hair coat and slicked off," he said, adding that the fact that the majority of the US cow herd is black also means they can't cool as efficiently.

Kansas is the third largest US cattle state behind Texas and Nebraska, with more than 2.4 million cattle in feedlots.