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29th Dec 2016

WATCH: Girl wasn’t allowed to ride a horse, so she taught her cow to be a horse instead

Carl Kinsella

Meet Hannah Simpson and her cow, Lilac.

When Hannah was told at the age of 11 that she wasn’t allowed to ride a horse, she got resourceful — and simply up-skilled her cow.

“I knew she was a good jumper because when she was younger, like only a few weeks old, she always jumped out of the cow shed – so we had to put blocks up against the gate to stop her jumping over,” Hannah told Newstube.

Videos from Hannah’s own Instagram confirm that the young woman has trained the cow to sprint like a horse and jump over sizeable logs, which is no mean feat for a Swiss Brown dairy cow of 1.4 metres.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOk0yEsBFkw/?taken-by=hanney_simpson

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOjkByshmS5/?taken-by=hanney_simpson

Vet Sunita McGrath addressed concerns that treating a cow like a show-jumper might be bad for the heifer, saying: “I don’t think it will do any harm for the cow as long as it’s ridden for the right reasons, and if anything it’s probably good for the cow to get out and do something different.”

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Topics:

Cow