But one named Magnolia did today, as the students at George Hall Elementary, in the shadows of Ladd-Peebles Stadium, learned all about her and the process of milking a cow.
“How many stomachs does Magnolia have?” Amanda Griffith, with Southwest Dairy Farmers, asked a crowd of second- and third-graders sitting on the ground behind the school.
The children threw out guesses, ranging from one to four, from seven to 1,000.
“One thousand,” I can’t even count that high, Griffith joked.
“I can,” a student responded.
The students learned that milk provides the body with nine valuable nutrients and vitamins, helping everything from their bones to their stomachs.
They learned that cows drink about 50 gallons of water per day, which is enough to fill up a bathtub. In turn, those who have had babies can produce about nine gallons of milk per day.
They have one stomach, with four distinct chambers.
But they don’t have top teeth, so they can’t really bite.
“I learned that Magnolia is six years old, and has had four babies already,” said 7-year-old Jailynn Jenkins, a second-grader.
Jailynn said she'd never seen a real, live cow, before today. “I thought she would be a little thinner.”
Magnolia, a black and white Holstein, and other cows with the Southwest Dairy Farmers frequently visit Alabama schools. After George Hall, Magnolia was heading over to Nan Gray Davis Elementary in Theodore.
She stayed in a trailer where the students could see her, but were protected.
Some students giggled as she drooled, as cows apparently often do. And they laughed when Griffith told them that she likes to pick her nose with her long tongue.
The students watched Griffith milk the cow with a machine, collecting about 10 pounds worth in a clear storage container. They learned it doesn't hurt for the cow to be milked. In fact, it provides relief.
And then they learned that, by law, milk from another person's cow must be pasteurized before you can drink it.
A cow has just one udder, with four teets, they learned.
Cows carry their babies in gestation for 10 months, and produce milk for 10 months after birth.
“She has to be clean when you milk her,” said 8-year-old Antonio Pettaway, a second-grader who had seen other cows at the fair before. “That way, you make sure you don’t get sick, and she won’t get sick, too.”