Y'all, taking care of livestock is hard work. You have to get up before the crack of dawn. So it's not surprising that 15-year-old Mitchell Miner felt sleepy after showing his cow Audri at the Iowa State Fair.
Miner woke up at 3 a.m. to show Audri in the dairy kettle show at the fair. They finished fifth out of seven. After the show, the exhausted pair simply laid down and had a nap together.
Miner's father, Jeremy Miner, encountered the scene and took a snapshot which he shared to his Facebook page, and the internet went wild. The picture even made it on to the front page of AOL.com. That is pretty impressive, even if the anchors don't know how to pronounce "heifer".
"She likes to lay down quite a bit," the younger Miner said to the Des Moines Register on Monday. "I don't really understand the bond with my animal either. She just enjoys my company."
The Miner family come from farm stock but live in the city. To ensure their kids got the benefits of a farm upbringing, the Miners spend every Summer in the country.
"We learned a lot from the farm," Miner's father told the Register. "We have those values instilled in us and we are trying to do what we can to preserve that."
The family borrowed Audri from a dairy farm in Blairstown, Iowa, but Mitchell has spent the whole summer taking care of her every day. Learning to be responsible for an animal has clearly had an impact on the young man, as well as on the heifer.
"I think it's just when you spend that much time with them, they get really comfortable with you," Mitchell's mother, Laura, said.
