February 18th is “Elm Farm Ollie Day,” which pays tribute to the day in 1930 when a gentle Guernsey cow was flown 72 miles from Bismarck, Missouri to the International Air Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri aboard a Ford Trimotor plane.

As if a flying cow isn’t unusual enough, the cow, also known as Nellie Jay, was milked during the flight as part of the promotional event.

The 24 quarts gathered en route were sealed in paper bottles and dropped by parachutes to the crowd of onlookers at the exposition.

According to a newspaper report from the time, Charles Lindbergh was attending the exposition and a quart of the “aerial milk” was set aside to be presented to him after the cow-carrying plane landed.

Three years earlier, after Lindbergh landed his monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, in Paris after completing the first solo, non-stop transatlantic flight, he’d famously requested a bath and a glass of milk.

Here’s a recording of the Bovine Cantata in B-flat major, from Madam Butterfat, courtesy of the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, WI, which celebrates Elm Farm Ollie Day.

Most stories say Elm Farm Ollie was the first cow to fly on a plane and the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.

She may indeed be the first cow to milked on a plane, but she was not the first bovine to fly.

In 1924, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines was the first commercial airline to transport a large live animal by air and that animal was Nico, a valuable young stud bull.

He boarded the plane in Rotterdam and flew to Paris.