Animals, News

The World’s Tallest Cow

From Blosom's Facebook page. Photo reprinted with permission.
From Blosom’s Facebook page. Photo reprinted with permission.

Blosom the cow has many good qualities. She’s sweet. She’s kind and she is very friendly.

But she also has a claim to fame. Blosom is officially the world’s tallest cow.

Blosom is a Holstein, living in Orangeville, Illinois in the United States.

She is big and tall, with long legs and black spots on her white body. She’s 13 years old and weighs 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms).

Recently, the people at the Guinness World Records book measured her she stands 190 centimetres or six feet, four inches tall “from the hoof to the withers,” according to her official certificate. (The withers is the ridge between the shoulder blades of a four-legged mammal.)

That makes her the tallest cow in the world.

She is owned by Patricia Meads-Hanson, who has raised her since she was a calf, according to CBC News.

Hanson told the host of the CBC radio program As It Happens that she thinks Blosom grew so huge because she has never given birth to a calf and so all of her energy went into growing big and tall.

CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Kathleen Tilly

Writing/Discussion Prompt
What was your favourite nursery rhyme when you were young?

Write a nursery rhyme about Blosom the cow that a young child would enjoy. It can either rhyme or not – it is up to you!

Blosom's certificate that says she is officially the world's tallest cow. Reprinted with permission; from Blosom's Facebook page.
Blosom’s certificate that says she is officially the world’s tallest cow. Reprinted with permission; from Blosom’s Facebook page.

Reading Prompt: Extend Understanding
Have you every read the Guinness World Records book before? It contains amazing facts about the biggest, tallest, smallest, strangest and most interesting people, places and things.

What would you be interested in looking up in the Guinness World Records book? What questions would you like to have answered by this book?

Primary
Extend understanding of texts by connecting the ideas in them to their own knowledge and experience, to other familiar texts, and to the world around them (OME, Reading: 1.6)

Junior
Extend understanding of texts by connecting the ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and insights, to other familiar texts, and to the world around them (OME, Reading: 1.6)

Language Feature: Adjectives
Blosom is described as big, tall and white with black spots. What other adjectives can you think of to describe Blosom?