A realtor once told me that the hardest homes to sell in a rural area are downwind of turkey farms bc the inescapable cloud of turkey shit stink is so foul (lol sorry but it's true). Downwind of cows is a distant third after chickens so opening a dairy w/o learning about e coli is unimaginable to me
I live in Iowa so if you wanna see a cow up close, you have plenty of opportunities to do so. And when you do you understand exactly why pasteurization is an essential, life-saving process.
Also, like, I guess maybe city people who've never driven anywhere rural don't know this but even before you can see the buildings or animals of a commercial farm, ranch, or dairy, you can tell what kind of livestock they have by how bad the shit stink is? What did they think that was??
(Cow is actually the least disgusting of the commercial livestock shit smells imo but it is unmistakably the smell of shit, and if you've never been downwind of a dairy or feedlot or in Denver before it snows: cow shit smell can travel an unbelievable distance.)
(btw I didn't ask how hard it is to sell a house downwind of a pig farm but again imo the stink off a pig farm is much less objectionable than off a poultry operation, slightly worse than a dairy, and way better than a feedlot.)
Feb 4, 2026 11:09
