I knew about racehorses having funny names, but it wasn’t until I had to make some signs for a prize show cattle sale that I understood prize show cows had the same sort of names.
Here’s some that have come through over the years needing signs for their sales (most had numbers on the end for filing purposes which I have removed):
Northern Improvement
Make It Rain
Sazerac’s Queen
Sharper Image
Ruby Butterfly
Shock Force
Cream Soda
Cowboy Cut
Right to Love
Miss Power Lass
Lock N Load
Talk About Me
Empriss
Card Uproar
Miss Pep
Duracell
High Voltage
War Diva
And like prize horses they’ll often combine names down the line, though sometimes they just tack a new number on the end to my sadness. I much prefer it when for example, “Walter Lydia” and “A Step Up” have a calf called “Two Step”.
“Miss Power Lass” is probably my favorite out of the list. And they always make the cows up to look like big fluffy velveteen statues when they’re on show. Pretty adorable looking.
“Elsie the Cow” was really named You’ll Do Lobelia*, and was buried at Walker Gordon Farms, near where Pepper Mill grew up. We’ve been to the site, although it’s been moved around a bit as developments go in on the property
My granddad, a retired railroad man, had 3 milk cows named Whistle Stop, Side Rail, and Loose Caboose. I have no idea if they were prize animals or registered anywhere, but as a 6-year old, I thought they were hilarious names for cows.
I once worked on a farm where the four milk cows were named Black Cow, White Cow, Long-legged Cow, and Short-legged Cow. I could tell apart Black Cow (mostly black) and White Cow (had more white than the others, anyway), but since all the cows’ legs were indistinguishable in length I never made more headway than that.
One of my grandfathers (both were dairy farmers), kept of list of cows with info about output, shots, etc. The names on the list never changed. When “Daisy” went to the big packing plant in the sky, the next cow to start producing became “Daisy”.
Simple.
Don’t recall if the other grandfather had any naming system at all.
My ex-wife’s parents named their cows with a theme: Sirloin, T-bone, etc. The pigs were given names like Pork Chop, Spare Rib, and … Cupcake. (Cupcake was a 4-H project)
The last herd I helped tend: Hussy, Crazy Bitch, and Crooked Horn.
Crooked Horn was a gentle soul. Crazy Bitch, she always looked like she had a bad case of worms because she didn’t gain weight no matter how much she ate. But, she raised a good, healthy calf every year.