Mooooove Over Merlin! Here's the Beef on Cumming Library's New Pet

Submitted by Signe Madson

Big news at the Cumming branch—we adopted a cow!

This past summer, I was talking to a family member who told me about the adopt a cow program the Dairy Excellence foundation runs. The program pairs classrooms—or in this case a library—with a calf and a dairy farm to follow throughout the cow’s first year of life.

I thought this would be really fun to adopt a cow and show the children updates on our cow throughout the year. Plus, we get a library pet without us having to physically take care of a cow (a win). But more importantly, the program will allow us to have conversations about agriculture and talk about where food comes from with kids. The program allows children to write to the dairy farmers to ask the farmer questions or thank them for taking care of the cow which I thought would be a fun way to have children practice their writing skills. I brought this up with Julie, and we started the process of asking for permission to adopt our cow.

Earlier this month, I received an email from the program announcing our host farm, Big Sandy Creek Dairy farm. The farm is located in Madison, Georgia and has been owned and operated by the Benkoski family for 75 years. I think it is very cool how close we are to the farm that has our cow.

Now for the most important part of this post: our cow. Last week I received an email from the program announcing that our cow this year is Cheddar.

She was born on September 1 and was 70 pounds and 30 inches tall at birth. She is a Holstein cow, so she has really lovely black and white spots. Her mom's (or dam’s) name is Tristan and her dad’s (or sire’s) name is Rocky. 

After seeing her, Kaity quickly made a coloring sheet, so the kids could color our cow after we introduce her in November at my Cow-a-Bunga story time.

 

After the initial introduction, I will continue to update the kiddos about our cow as I receive updates. But until then, here are some more cow pictures!