Story Time at Edgar’s Mission! Rescued Cow and her Calf Listen to Book About Them
In an uplifting video that proves that others are mothers, too, Victorian farmed-animal sanctuary Edgar’s Mission founder Pam Ahern reads to rescued mother cow Clarabelle and her calf, Valentine. The cute plot twist? It’s a true story about the cows themselves.
Taken from AnimalKind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion by PETA president Ingrid Newkirk and bestselling author Gene Stone, the passage read by Ahern tells the tale of how Clarabelle – terrified of having yet another calf torn away after having lost so many to the dairy industry – cleverly and lovingly hid her son, Valentine, after giving birth, perhaps not quite believing she was, in fact, safe at the sanctuary.
It’s an adorable story and a heart-warming video with a very important message: cows experience motherly love, just as humans do. In today’s dairy industry, mother cows are repeatedly forcibly impregnated and relentlessly milked. Their babies are always taken away from them shortly after birth. Female calves grow to follow in the sad footsteps of their mothers, while male calves endure a long, stressful journey to the abattoir to be killed for veal when they’re still under 30 days old. Meanwhile, mother cows cry out for days in grief.
Clarabelle’s story truly exemplifies the motherly love felt by millions of grieving cows whose calves are taken from them so that humans can drink their milk.
Thanks to the wonderful work of Edgar’s Mission, Clarabelle and Valentine are safe, but you don’t have rescue cows to make a difference – you can help simply by ditching dairy and leaving animals off your plate.
