Norway’s oldest and most famous cow is dead

The cow, named for her distinctive uneven horns, would have turned 21 this November had her owner, 80-year-old Johannes Hauge not decided to take her to the abattoir. 

“Her legs were rigid at the end, I realised,” Hauge told Norway's state broadcaster NRK. “It was best to get her off to the slaughterhouse while she could still walk, because it is painful to watch sick animals.”

While Wonky Horns, or Skeivhodno in Norwegian, was by far the oldest cow in the country, she was less than half of the age of the the most venerable cow on record, Ireland's Big Bertha, who was 48 years old when she died in 1993, having produced 39 calves.

Skeivhodno herself produced 17 calves in her lifetime, and was the sole cow allowed to remain on the farm when Hauge retired and got rid of the rest of his herd. 

The ageing cow had been kept mainly a pet and would alert Hauge if anyone entered the farm. 

“She is purely a guard cow, but really she is as kind as the day is long,”  Hauge told the local Kvinnheringen newspaper proudly in May as his strange-horned companion achieved a level of fame. “She just walks around eating and enjoying herself, and when the evening comes, she goes back to the cowshed, opens the door hook with her horn and goes in.”

Hauge was fond of his ageing cow, and was sad to see her go.

“I will miss her. But she had a good life, and she was probably Norway's most famous cow,” he told NRK.  “She will probably become sausage or something like that.”