Watch Two Calves Take A 600-Mile Toyota 4Runner Road Trip To A New Life

Driving with a pet in the car is a daily reality for millions of Americans, and there’s an entire industry focused on making this type of journey more comfortable for both the humans and animals involved.

But what happens if the “pet” is not a dog, a cat or small furry animal, but a calf? Make that two calves, actually. As you can imagine, that’s quite a challenge, especially if we’re talking about transporting them in a regular SUV like the Toyota 4Runner for hundreds of miles.

Saving The Lives Of Two Cute Calves Was Worth The Trouble

It’s a true and heartwarming story: a father and a daughter teamed up to drive over 600 miles with two calves in the back of a Toyota SUV with the goal of saving their lives by taking them to an animal sanctuary.

Featured on The Dodo’s YouTube channel, the short film titled “Cow Trip” documents the unusual adventure in a funny and heartfelt manner. Unsurprisingly, the journey of filmmaker Joanna Zelman, a former executive producer of animal-focused online publisher The Dodo, and her father Jared Zelman, a freshly-retired doctor, was quite unpredictable.

The team set out to save Mickey and Moose, two baby cows that which had been given weeks to live before being taken to a slaughterhouse, as is the fate of most male dairy calves. The goal was to drive them 600 miles from two Vermont farms where they were born to Rosie’s Farm Sanctuary in Maryland.

Joanna Zelman, told ABC News she and her dad were enlisted nearly four years ago to transport the two 10-day-old calves, who at the time were not doing okay at the farm. Since they would have wound up in the slaughterhouse, Joana decided to save them, which wasn’t a difficult decision to make.

Not A Job For The Faint-Hearted

Needless to say, the logistics of such an endeavor were quite complex. The pair lined their SUV with tarps and hay, making sure they had enough milk to feed the hungry baby cows.

Occasionally, they had to sing to the calves to calm them down and help them relax—traveling in an SUV mere days after they were born was a stressful experience for them. Jared even got kicked by one of the calves at one point, but thankfully it was nothing serious.

They took breaks along the way to feed Mickey and Moose and clean the mess they inevitably made, with the entire 600-mile trip taking approximately 14 hours. Having reached their destination, the calves had to spend a month in quarantine, after which they were allowed to roam the sanctuary more freely and take their first steps on grass.

Joana and Jared have since continually returned to Rosie’s Farm Sanctuary to visit the calves, and the good news is they thrived at the farm. Four years later, they are happy bulls—and still best friends.

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