Ta-da!

This is my biggest pet, another common farm animal. She matches the sheep, at least - with her horns and her spots. She is the most common dairy breed of cattle in America, a Holstein - but she will never produce milk, because she is also something known as a "freemartin". Freemartin is the common term for a heifer born a twin to a bull calf - about 90% of the time the heifer twin is born sterile due to exposure/contamination of testosterone through placental cross-transfer via interconnected blood vessels. The female reproductive tract is a little slower to start developing and producing any hormones of its own before the male fetus has already developed testes, so it usually results in a slightly "stunted" female reproductive tract (to varying degrees - some appear female but just never "settle", some act like bulls and mount other cows, some actually have calves and produce milk like any other dairy cow).

I got Ta-da! when she was a day-old calf with her twin brother. I helped take them away from their mother, so I know they were definitely twins - and yes, I was also shocked that the mother cow didn't mind a stranger taking her babies away. I was afraid to go in the pen with such a big mother animal because that is usually a bad idea, but the farmer explained that dairy cows are generally bad mothers - they don't really care what happens after the calf is born as long as someone milks them. Sometimes they even kill the calf if the farmer doesn't take it away fast enough, because they perceive it as a threat and they crush it without really thinking. I sent Ta-da! to a friend's farm once, to see if his bull would settle her - and she came home open, so she is definitely sterile.

I got her and her brother to raise for beef, but then I fell in love with her, so she is still here after years (many, for a cow). Her twin died when he was young, something wrong with him internally (I cut open to see - curious why he died so suddenly). She is a big brat, and she destroys my fence and other barriers, but she will stay here forever because I don't trust her with anyone else - she is a lot to handle.

I can't get her to come up to me because she is suspicious of the electric fence - it is a very flimsy and mostly mental barrier, but it packs a punch and it is the only thing that keeps her in line. And you can see she is right to be suspicious near the end 😂 - oops, left the hose touching the full water tub, touching the fence, and she touched it...my bad 😈😂