Though 15-year-old Mitchell Miner and his trusty cow Audri didnโt win the top prize in the Iowa State Fairโs youth dairy cattle show, they have surely won the worldโs heart.
The two worked hard to compete in the contest and ended up coming in fifth place out of seven other contestants.
They were pretty tired since they had been up since 3 a.m. for the last three days in a row and they decided to take a nap together inside a barn after the show.
They had become quite close since theyโd spent just about every day together over the last two months preparing for the competition. Mitchell would lead, bath, clip, and walk Audri regularly leading up to the competition.
When they were taking their snooze, Mitchellโs dad, Jeremy Miner, decided to snap 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.
โOur son Mitchell and his heifer after showing yesterday,โ the photoโs caption read.
The photo, which is no longer available on Facebook, got more than 15,000 likes by the next afternoon.
โThis is too cute,โ wrote one YouTuber
โMoooooooooove over youโre hogging the hay,โ joked another.
โThatโs so sweet,โ someone else commented
Just a boy and his cow. This photo is almost too cute for words!
Mitchell says he isnโt quite sure how he and Audri became so close.
โShe likes to lay down quite a bit,โ Mitchell told The Des Moines Register. โ I donโt really understand the bond with my animal either. She just enjoys my company.โ
But Mitchellโs mother, Laura, thinks she has an idea why.
โI think itโs just when you spend that much time with them, they get really comfortable with you,โ 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.
โWe learned a lot from the farm,โ Jeremy said. โWe have those values instilled in us and we are trying to do what we can to preserve that.โ
Audri was borrowed for the summer and will head back to her dairy farm in Blairstown in the fall after the familyโs final showing in September.
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