River of red Skittles coats Wisconsin highway

A rain-soaked box aboard a flatbed pickup truck ruptured in Dodge County, coating a stretch of County Highway S in Beaver Dam with hundreds of thousands of red Skittles, the sheriff's office reported Wednesday.

Sheriff's deputies discovered the candy-covered roadway shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday near Blackbird Road, according to a post on the Dodge County Sheriff's Office Facebook page.

The Dodge County Highway Department was called to clean up the candy-coated shells - packed with such yummy ingredients as sugar, corn syrup, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, tapioca dextrin, sodium citrate and carnauba wax - which were intended to be cattle feed because they did not make the cut for packaging, according to the sheriff's office.

As the price of corn increased in recent years, some farmers have turned to discarded food products to feed their cows.

According to a 2012 Reuters report: "In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn."

And, apparently, that includes red Skittles.