You might remember my previous post regarding Dorothy the Hereford Cow. She has been part of our family for six years now, and we have grown fond of her. But Dorothy cannot have a baby calf, having suffered a stillborn and difficult birth in her third year, and so, ever since, she has just been a companion animal at our farm. If you keep horses or livestock, you know that it costs a lot to feed a large animal, and we raise beef cattle and aren’t really in the business of keeping cows as pets. So we have continually weighed our options and questioned ourselves on Dorothy’s purpose in life. We did not want to send her to the auction, knowing she would only sell as a slaughter animal. So we decided to try to find a good home for her as a pet cow, and try to get a little money for her as well, since we’d like to buy a mother cow to replace her.
So I posted an ad on Craigslist.org, which is my go-to resource for finding things locally. I put up pictures of sweet Dorothy, and wrote a lengthy description, and waited for responses. The emails came in three at a time. It seems that there are lots of people wanting a pet cow! I was excited and encouraged, and answered each one, asking them to provide information on what kind of home and life they planned for Dorothy, and asking how much they could afford to pay for her. This thinned down the responses considerably, as most of them wanted the animal for free. One lady wrote that she had read Dorothy’s story and it made her cry; and although she could not provide a home for her, she was praying that we would find the perfect home for her.
As a weigh-up animal alone Dorothy was worth a lot of money, because she is a big cow, and cows are sold by the pound. And while we could not see sending her to slaughter, we also didn’t want to just give her away. So we waited. Then, one night while I was at the computer late, an email came in from a lady named Stephanie. She had read Dorothy’s story, and showed it to her husband, and they had agreed that she was exactly what they’d been looking for! They own a horse with laminitis and arthritis in her front leg, and had made a forever home for her, but wanted a companion animal for the horse. Stephanie said there was a nice lot for her to live in with a round bale feeder, a shed for shelter, trees for shade, and twenty acres of green alfalfa they put up in hay every year. She even met our price on Dorothy, providing that we could deliver her that weekend. It sounded like the perfect solution.
So we made plans to take Dorothy to her new home last weekend. Here are some photos of our trip:
Backing up the trailer to load up Dorothy….
Dorothy’s last few moments at our farm….notice she is Queen of the Bale Ring!
Loading Dorothy into the stock trailer…she just follows a bucket wherever it leads.
Here she is in the trailer, eating corn none too delicately…
This is the road to Dorothy’s new home…
Dorothy’s arrival to her new lot…you can see her nose at the front of the trailer, catching a whiff of fresh country air.
This is our daughter holding Dorothy’s new stablemate, a Quarter Horse mare named Sunny.
Dorothy’s grand descent…
Dorothy and her new owner Stephanie….who needs a handshake? A bucket of corn will do!
Settling in and getting comfortable…..still the Queen of the Round Bale!
Sunny and Dorothy, best of friends.
