The proposition filmmaker Joanna Zelman had for her dad in June 2022 went something like this:
Want to come with me to a dairy farm in Vermont to rescue a baby calf and drive him to a farm animal sanctuary in Maryland in the back of our car?
Zelman’s burger-loving father, Jared Zelman, a retired physician living in western Connecticut, didn’t hesitate: “Sure, let’s do it.”
After he agreed, she asked him whether he had interacted with cows before.
“Well, not close,” he admitted. “I mean, I’ve mooed at them.”
Good enough. The trip was on.
The questions about why a baby calf had to be saved from a dairy, what supplies they would need for the trip and could they stop for a milkshake along the way would wait until later. Zelman, now 77, trusted his daughter’s instincts.
“Frankly, it was more that my daughter was asking me to go on a trip with her, and I knew it would be interesting,” he said. “And we laugh a lot.”
Joanna Zelman, 40, said her mother is the real animal person in the family, but she was thrilled to have her dad along. “He goes into every new experience with such an open heart, so to travel with him was just really cool,” she said.
On Thursday, “Cow Trip,” her 27-minute documentary about the daughter-father calf-saving adventure premiered on the Dodo, the animal-centric website where Zelman previously worked as executive producer. She has also received a grant from D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities to host a screening in D.C. in the fall.
As with most road trips, this one did not quite go as planned.
As they prepared to leave for Vermont, they got a phone call from Michele Waldman, a psychotherapist and animal rights activist who in 2022 founded Rosie’s Farm Sanctuary, a five-acre refuge in Potomac, Maryland, for farm animals who would otherwise be slaughtered, overworked or forced to live in cramped cages.
The sanctuary also provides educational programs, sponsors advocacy efforts and invites visitors “to see animals as individuals with unique personalities, intelligence, and the capacity for love.”
Waldman was excited the Zelmans were bringing a baby calf to the sanctuary, but she had an update and a request.
A second calf at another Vermont dairy farm had been offered to the sanctuary. Could the Zelmans bring that one back with them as well?
The calf rescue was now a calves rescue. The Zelmans happily agreed to add a second.
And so within the film’s first few minutes, Mickey, a baby black-and-white male Holstein, and Moose, a days-old caramel male Ayrshire, are seen laying down in the tarp-lined, straw-covered back of a friend’s SUV headed away from their Vermont farms and toward their new home at Rosie’s in D.C.’s suburbs.
Along the way, there would be medical crises, a lost phone, debates over directions, Jared’s introduction to Red Bull and a surprise discovery. And, at the end, Mickey and Moose happily settled in at their new digs.
Joanna, a vegan and lifelong animal lover, said part of the reason she made the film was that she had been surprised to learn that cows were typically slaughtered at a young age.
At dairy farms, she explained, baby cows are separated from their mothers soon after birth so that the mother’s milk can be collected for commercial sale. The calves are typically hand-fed calf colostrum and kept away from their mothers.
Because they can’t produce milk, most male calves born on dairy farms, like Mickey and Moose, are moved away soon after being born. They are often sold to veal farms where they are processed for meat when they are just a few months old.
Zelman said she wanted a different outcome for Mickey and Moose.
By making the movie, she hoped to expand the rescue of Mickey and Moose in a way that could reach people and engage them in the issues related to farm animals, and cows specifically.
She knows that saving a calf or two from imminent slaughter is a drop in the bucket, but she’s hopeful the film can lead viewers to rethink their relationship with animals.
“I’d like people to learn that even if animals are obviously different from us that they can still have best friends and feel pain and feel joy and that they’re deserving of a good life,” she said. “My hope is that how we choose to relate to those animals can be an example of how we all choose to relate to each other in this world.”
While the film is a love note to Mickey and Moose, “Cow Trip” is also a tribute to her father and his approach to life.
“I honestly just want to show people the way that my dad walks through life,” she said. “He’s known in our town as this really compassionate doctor, and seeing him approach these animals with that same kind of openness was really cool.”
The experience changed her father in ways he didn’t expect. Since the road trip and subsequent visits to Rosie’s, he has bonded with Mickey and Moose. And while not a vegan, he has given up milk and most dairy products and rarely eats meat.
“I just don’t have the taste for it anymore,” he said.
On a beautiful afternoon earlier this month, father and daughter stopped by Rosie’s to catch up with Waldman. A dozen goats romped in a nearby field, five enormous pigs rolled over for belly rubs in a separate pen. Chickens and turkeys ran free, and three miniature horses trotted on a gently sloping lawn.
As Waldman and the Zelmans approached them, Mickey and Moose, now towering behemoths weighing about 1,700 pounds each, craned their necks over the wooden fence of their vast bucolic pen. They were soon inhaling the celery and apples the Zelmans fed them and lowing loudly in appreciation.
Jared stepped back and laughed. “I don’t know,” he said, “they look pretty happy.”
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