Maisie has never been able to see or spend time with her babies after giving birth… until now. All three of her babies had always been taken away from her to be sold after she gave birth.
Thanks to the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, she’ll get to bond with her latest calf.
“Maisie loves her baby!” Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary wrote on Facebook. “Only a few hours old and they are totally bonded.”
Maisie used to live on a Pennsylvania dairy farm. Her elderly owner eventually became too sick to continue working his farm and decided to sell it along with his livestock.
All his livestock were sold at auction, except for Maisie.
“Maisie was special to this farmer, so he agreed to let her live and go to a sanctuary,” Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary wrote on Facebook.
The farmer found that there was something special about Maisie.
“When she was young she would jump the fence into the farmer’s yard and hang out with his dogs,” the sanctuary explainsed. “She would run around and play with the dogs and she loved people and would follow him around.”
He wanted a better life for Maisie and Grace Froelich, who works with Animal Rescue Inc. and feeds cats near the farm, helped him arrange that. She drove Maisie all the way to the sanctuary in Maryland.
“With this one cow he was able to see how cows can be friendly and how much personality they have, if just given the opportunity to show it,” the sanctuary wrote. “The farmer even shed a few tears as she was being led onto the trailer.”
Now Maisie will be able to live a long life, unlike other dairy cows.
“Maisie is one of the very few lucky ones- after being impregnated every year, giving birth and then having their babies immediately taken away and sold for veal, most dairy cows are slaughtered for hamburger meat when their milk production decreases at just 5-6 years,” the sanctuary explains. “Maisie is only four, and now she will have a wonderful long life (cows can live to be about 25) running in the fields and pastures and grazing with the other rescued cows.”
The sanctuary employees absolutely fell in love with Maisie and welcomed her like family.
“We love her so much already, she likes to be hugged and petted and is such a sweet and adorable girl!” they said.
“A big thanks to the awesome folks at Animal Rescue Inc. who convinced the farmer to let Maisie come to Poplar, and who transported her here!”
As grateful as they were to save Maisie’s life, they had no idea they were, in fact, saving two lives that day. The sanctuary staff found out that Maisie was pregnant, two months after she arrived.
Maisie was used to this.
Dairy cows are often in a constant cycle of being impregnated, pregnant, and giving birth so they can continue to give milk. The sanctuary was overjoyed when Maisie gave birth to a calf that she was allowed to bond with.
“It’s unbelievable how lucky Maisie and her baby are,” the sanctuary’s founder Terry Cummings told The Dodo.
Her baby was named Justin because he was born “just-in” time.
“Now, for the first time, Maisie’s baby will have a name and a future, and they will be able to live together happily for the rest of their lives,” Cummings wrote.
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