Dozens of ‘rogue’ cows run free along South Carolina highway after 18-wheeler crashes in fiery blaze: wild photos

Talk about free-range cattle.

A swarm of cows ran free across a South Carolina highway Tuesday after the tractor-trailer carrying them ran off the road in a fiery wreck.

Wild photographs showed real-life cowboys lassoing the runaway cows as they bolted down the interstate and waded in nearby waters.

“In an unusual [sight], riders on horseback used lassos to catch some of the cows and place them in cattle trailers,” Colleton County Fire-Rescue said in a release.

More than 35 cattle were inside an 18-wheeler when it crashed into a bridge, burst into flames and split in half, with its cattle car plunging into a river near Walterboro, a city 50 miles west of Charleston.

Rescue teams responded just past 1 a.m. to find the mangled truck completely engulfed in flames and hanging over the side of the bridge, leaking diesel fuel across the roadway and into the water below.

Miraculously, the driver and his herd escaped from the inferno, officials said.

The driver was rushed to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

“Firefighters and law enforcement discovered several cows in the river and on the banks. Some were injured,” fire officials said.

The rest of the herd had run loose into the woods and along the highway, setting off a wild day-long chase involving rescue teams and local veterinarians and ranchers, some of whom arrived on horseback.

Out of an abundance of caution, investigators shut down both the northbound and southbound sides of the roadway as they hunted down the roaming cattle, want of which were dark-colored and not visible during nighttime along the rural highway.

“The effort ran into hours as the cattle ran in multiple directions,” the fire department said.

Officials re-opened the highway after 10 exhilarating hours, but the chase wasn’t over — it took the remainder of the day to round up rogue cows that had escaped to neighborhoods along the highway.