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Naturalists expected she would return to her herd, but she never did.
After running away from the farm, this past November near Bialowieza Forest in Poland, this young Limousin cow was later seen with a wild herd of bison!
According to bison expert, Rafal Kowalczyk, at the Mammal Research Institute at the Polish Academy of Sciences, the cow looks to be healthy, which means she has been foraging along with the herd successfully. Luckily for the Limousin cow, their breed has thick fur and is built for harsh conditions which also helped her survive out in the wild.
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The risks
Even though the story of a cow runaway and joining a herd of bison is leaving people in love with this story, it is not an ideal situation as the cow is simply too young right now to mate. If she were to get pregnant now, the hybrid calf would likely kill her during birth since it would be much bigger than a normal cow calf. And, a bison and domesticated cow hybrid offspring (beefalo) would also dilute the bison gene pool, threatening the small wild bison population which already went extinct during World War I.
It will be challenging but scientists are planning to remove the rogue cow from the bison herd by summer.
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