Although 15-year-old Mitchell Miner and his trusty cow Audri did not win the top prize at the youth dairy cattle show at the Iowa State Fair, they certainly won the heart of the world. Since they were up since 3 a.m. they were pretty tired. They decided to take a nap together in the barn after the show for the final three days in a row. They were quite close since they were spending about every day preparing for the competition in the last two months. Mitchell would lead, bath, clip, and walk Audri regularly leading up to the competition.
When they were taking their snooze, Mitchell’s dad, Jeremy Miner, snapped the most adorable photos of the two of them cuddled up during their nap. Jeremy later posted a photo of Mitchell and Audri on Facebook and the internet completely fell in love with it.
“Our son Mitchell and his heifer after showing yesterday,” the photo’s caption stated.
The photo, which is no longer available on Facebook, got more than 15,000 likes by the next evening.
“This is too cute,” wrote one YouTuber.
“Moooooooooove over you’re hogging the hay,” joked another.
“That’s so sweet,” someone else commented
Just a boy and his cow. This photo is almost too cute for words!
Mitchell says he isn’t quite positive how he and Audri became so close.
“She likes to lay down quite a bit,” Mitchell told The Des Moines Register. ” I don’t really understand the bond with my animal either. She just enjoys my company.”
But Mitchell’s mother, Laura, thinks she has an idea why.
“I think it’s just when you spend that much time with them, they get really comfortable with you,” she said.
Though both Jeremy and Laura grew up living on farms, they are the first-generation in their families to break that tradition.
Even though they no longer live on a farm, they continue to uphold farm-life values.
“We learned a lot from the farm,” Jeremy said. “We have those values instilled in us and we are trying to do what we can to preserve that.”
Audri was borrowed for the summer months and will head back to her dairy farm in Blairstown in the fall after the family’s last showing in September.
