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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky family battling extreme cold temperatures on their farm over the weekend opened their home to a newborn calf that was struggling in the deep freeze.
Hours later, the calf, fed and fluffed, took a spot on the couch with the Sorrell family’s two children. Their mom, Macey Sorrell, snapped some photos and later posted them to social media, and the cuteness did not go unnoticed.
The calf was born outdoors in single digit temperatures on Saturday. Macey Sorrell said her husband, Tanner, went outside to check on the pregnant mother and found the calf, suffering in the cold.
“She was just frozen. Her umbilical cord looked like a popsicle,” Macey Sorrell said Thursday from her home in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. “It was just frozen.”
After losing a calf last winter to frostbite, the family moved quickly to bring the baby inside to clean her off and warm her up.
“When we brought her in, she had ice on her. The afterbirth was still on her, I had to wipe all that off,” Sorrell said. “I took out the blow dryer and warmed her up, and got her all fluffed out.”
Soon the calf was lying on the couch, cuddling with her young children.
“They crawled up next to her like it was just the most normal thing,” she said. Her 3-year-old son, Gregory, decided to name the calf Sally, a character from his favorite movie, “Cars.”
The family keeps about three dozen cows on their land and are used to bringing farm animals indoors from time to time. Sally was reunited with her mother the next morning, and is doing well, Sorrell said.
Sorrell said she almost didn’t share the photos on social media, because it was nothing new to the family to bring an animal indoors when necessary. Several commented on the cuteness of the photos.
“It’s just part of what you do,” she said.
joyful101207 on January 30th, 2026 at 00:22 UTC »
This is heartwarming in a time that seems consumed by hatred and violence against innocent people. This is just sweet and innocent, thank you.
kgiann on January 29th, 2026 at 22:38 UTC »
I was given a stuffed lamb when I was born. I'm about to be 34, and its tail is basically part of its body because I've had a cloth diaper on her since I was a toddler. My great aunt put the diaper on the sheep because when my great aunt was a young woman, she and her husband had a barn that leaked when it rained. To protect their sheep, they would bring the sheep in the house during storms. To protect their house, my great aunt sewed cloth diapers for all of the sheep. I loved looking through photo albums of the sheep when I was a toddler, so my aunt made a cloth diaper for my stuffed sheep.
InformationHorder on January 29th, 2026 at 21:50 UTC »
Used to live in a house where the backyard was adjoining a 10 acre cow pasture the neighbors raised a small herd of red Angus in. One of the cows gave birth in a driving snowstorm right in the corner where they couldn't see and I went to their house to let them know it happened. Major storm systems and weather fronts can set off labor and make animals do weird things.