OMG!! There’s a COW beauty pageant in Malaysia?!

You know those fancy animal pageants where they dress up dogs, or cats, or horses in costumes, so that atas class people and the Queen can admire them and give them a blue ribbon as first prize?

Well, without the internet, we might never have known there was such a competition in Malaysia too. And no, we’re not talking about dog or cat shows (coz those are so mainstream right?). Can you guess which animal? COWS!! We’re talking about a cow pageant!! We kid you not, Terengganu organised a ‘pertandingan lembu cantik’, and even more hilarious, it was the first suggestion to pop up on Google search:

We didn’t know cow beauty pageants were such a popular search among Malaysians. 😆

OMG! Why, Terengganu? Why a cow pageant??

‘The Most Beautiful Cow’ pageant was first reported in December 2014, mostly by BM media – Sinar Harian, Berita Harian, Astro Awani and Terengganu Times. At the time, it was just announcement oni and it was planned for the following year. Organised by the Terengganu government, the competition is supposed be on district and state level, with two categories: lembu betina (cows) and lembu jantan (bulls). 😀

“The final will be held on the state-level Farmers, Livestock Breeders and Fishermen’s Day.” – Nawi Mohamad, Chairman of the state Jawatankuasa Pertanian dan Industri Asas Tani, Perusahaan Perladangan dan Komoditi, Free Malaysia Today

On a side note: Farmers, Livestock Breeders and Fishermen’s Day is a national and state celebration held every year. It’s a government initiative by the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry to promote our farming, veterinary, fisheries and engineering industries. It’s quite big wan, even Najib attended last year.

Ok, back to the contest…

And ‘The Most Beautiful Cow’ is… James Bond!

No really! We’re udderly serious. A cow named James Bond with its 007 tag was crowned ‘Mr. Lembu 2015’, on 19 September. The two-year-old bovine of local KK breed (short for Kedah/Kelantan breed) belongs to breeder Mat Rusli Ismail, 47, from Kampung Wakaf Dua, Marang.

And you won’t believe what James Bond won for his owner… a Perodua Axia grand prize! Ok, CILISOS is officially moo-ving into the cow breeding business after this. With such a lucrative prize at steak, Mat Rusli must have felt super nervous about the contest.

“Alhamdulillah, I did not expect to win due to stiff competition from seven other contestants from other districts. I am taking care of over 70 cows and what makes James Bond so special is it has a pair of red horns.” – Mat Rusli on Malaysiakini

Not sure what the judges were looking for, but if it’s anything like cow pageants from other countries, they will check the cows’ back and bone structure, hair, how much milk it can produce and so on. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a photo of James Bond, but we searched for KK breed cows and figured da fler should prolly look like this:

Maybe it was James Bond’s red horns that made the judges go, “This one wins hooves down la.”

Having been a breeder for 13 years, Mat Rusli can cow-nt his blessings one of his cows won a contest for the first time. He thanked the state Veterinary Department especially coz they always gave advice to breeders to help them produce healthy and high quality livestock.

Actually there’s a reason for this strange competition…

In short, the Terengganu government wants to increase the market price of cattle and encourage more people to take up cattle farming.

“We also want breeders to be more responsible in looking after their livestock and not let them roam about uncontrolled.” – Nawi Mohamad on Utusan Online

Adding to that, the government doesn’t wanna rely too much on importing meat any more. Instead, Malaysia wants to become a major exporter. So, PM Najib encouraged people in agriculture to be more innovative and progressive. It is not just for scientists, but for farmers, livestock breeders and fishermen to come up with new ways to beef up the industry, he said.

Ahhhhh, that explains why they came up with ‘The Most Beautiful Cow’ pageant la. Then the country definitely needs all the help it can get from Terengganu, since Negeri Sembilan failed to produce… Remember the National Feedlot Corporation (NFCorp) scandal? If you don’t, click here to refresh your memory. The cattle farming project in Gemas was supposed to be the “Beef Valley” of Malaysia. Now it’s not even a Beef Alley, reports Food navigator-asia.com.

Anyway, scandals aside, we’re proud of two-year-old James Bond for bringing back honour back to the cow community.

P/S: Thanks for bearing with us through all the painful, cringe-worthy puns ugaiz.