We Rescued a Cow!

July 2024, almost one full year after getting Dolly our first jersey cow, we brought home Lola!

(If you haven’t read Dolly’s story, you can here.)

We had learned a lot in that first year of having a family milk cow, we experienced Dolly bloating, which for cows can be very dangerous, we had an over supply of milk, then an undersupply, we got up every single morning and milked her no matter our plans for that day or the weather conditions and washed all the parts, filtered hundreds of gallons of milk. But over all, we just absolutely loved having fresh milk and we loved having a family milk cow. We started to feel a need for her to have a friend. We tried putting the sheep in her pasture and she did not love that… she was not thrilled with the pig either. We considered a donkey but then just decided we need another jersey cow for her to live with, cows are herd animals she shouldn’t be alone. We prayed about it because another cow meant another bill, more hay, more maintenance, more milk etc. We soon stumbled upon a jersey cow for sale pretty locally, only about an hour and half compared to the 14 hour round trip we did to get Dolly, that seemed amazing! But the owner was asking way too much for her. We figured let’s offer what we paid for Dolly and see what he says. The worst case he says no and he’d sell her to someone else and we’d take that as God’s answer that she wasn’t our cow. We didn’t get a no, we got a maybe. He said it was the highest offer he has received but he’s going to wait a bit and see if he gets anymore offers. Seemed fair considering we offered almost half of what he was asking. We didn’t hear back so we reached out to see if he sold her to someone else. He said he was considering another deal that was offering him $1200 and half a pig… that’s what I call a homesteading deal right there! We figured at this point it was done, she was not our cow and we said ok! A few weeks go by and we see on a local homesteading page a girl named Danielle posted about a cow that needs to be rescued, it was a picture of a cute jersey cow that looked healthy and I honestly thought, “rescued???” When I hear rescue, I picture a skinny, underfed, unhealthy animal. And that was not the picture I was looking at. I read on to see that this cow was going to be sent to the butcher in 4 days if he doesn’t have a buyer to give him his asking price. Then it hit me, it’s Lola the cow we tried to buy last month! We couldn’t believe it. We saw this post have comment after comment people saying they were giving him all kinds of offers and he didn’t accept any of them because the offers just weren’t high enough. We reached out to the owner AGAIN to see if he would change his mind, he gave us another no. So we just prayed everything would work out because we just didn’t have more money to offer for her. More time went by and Danielle then announces she raised enough money to buy Lola! She had been saved! But the kicker is, Danielle didn’t want a cow, she is just an animal lover and couldn’t let Lola go to the butcher. So she posted that she is looking for a loving home for her. I of course applied! She told me she had a list of people even a vet tech! I thought, “ya I’m not going to be picked!” But after some online conversations, answering many questions to prove we knew about cows, and a visit to our homestead, Danielle picked us! She loved the space we had for her and that Lola would have Dolly as a friend. We picked her up the following week. This time it was only an hour drive and we had our own trailer now!

We of course were worried, what if Dolly and Lola didn’t get along? We cross fenced the pasture just to make sure they were both safe. But the girls bonded right away and loved each other from day one and been best friends ever since. We constantly find them licking on each other and standing next to each other every day all day!

It’s been an absolute blessing because it was time to breed Dolly which means she would have to stop milking for a while. Cows are pregnant just as long as humans, did you know that? Neither did I until I wanted to breed Dolly…we learn a bit as we go. So now we get to milk Lola while Dolly is on maternity leave.

This is such a great example of God’s timing. We wanted a cow and we hit no after no, we thought “why?”for a bit but now looking back, what wonderful timing! Because it wasn’t ours, God had something so much better in store for us. And what a blessing that is. Jeremiah 29:11- ” ‘For I know the Plans I have for you’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’ “