Family in Kentucky shelters struggling calf born amid extreme cold temperatures
Jan 29, 2026, 11:31 AM
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.
