We all know about the lengths pet owners will go to make their precious fido stand out at an event like the Westminster Dog Show (remember the movie Best in Show?), but did you know that cow owners do the same thing before cattle shows? Before Bessie can win a ribbon, she must first be washed, blow-dried, and styled! The result is so fluffy and adorable, it makes you want to take up cow hugging as your new hobby.
At first we thought that fluffy cows might be a special breed, but in fact, it’s all in the grooming. How does one go about making a cow fluffy? First you need the right tools. You can’t use just any old shampoo on a cow, instead, you’ll need to get some cattle hair care products. Maybe some ProPolish Shine & Protect, or some Rose Oil Conditioner (no, we are not making any of this up). After you’ve washed your cow, you’ll need to break out the blow drier. The video below shows a fluffy cow being styled to perfection with a blow drier that looks not unlike one of the attachments on my vacuum cleaner.
How did the idea for fluffifying cows get started? According to USA Today, Matt Lautner, a 32-year-old cattleman from Adel Iowa, had—like many cattle breeders—been grooming his bulls and cows for shows. Appearances matter at these shows and prize-winning bulls can sometimes auction for as much as $75,000. Somehow a photo from one of these shows ended up on Reddit, and so the Internet phenomenon of the Fluffy Cow was born. Lautner started a Facebook page: Fluffy Cows R Us, which now has almost 50,000 likes. Of course it does, it has photos like this:
Fluffy calf from Fluffy Cows R Us | Photo Credit: facebook.com/fluffycowzz
Amy Scheuerman
Amy Scheuerman—culture's former web director—spent eight years in North Carolina where she developed a love of barbecue and biscuits before moving up north to get a degree in nutrition. She now works at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
