Farmer’s lost wedding ring found in cow’s stomach months later

While feeding oat silage, a cow slipped the wedding ring off the farmer's finger with her rough tongue and swallowed it together with the silage. Four months later, a butcher discovered the ring. Photo / Getty Images

It’s a nightmare that becomes reality for all too many newlyweds: an ill-fitting wedding ring that slips off the finger and vanishes while doing the dishes or taking a swim.

But for one German farmer, luck was on his side after he lost his ring while feeding his cows. Several months later, his butcher retrieved it from the animal’s stomach.

Johannes Brandhuber, a recently married farmer in the small town of Simbach am Inn in Lower Bavaria, was distraught when he lost his ring in November while tending to his livestock.

Unbeknown to him at the time, the ring came off his finger and was swallowed by one of his cows, Herzal, while he was feeding her some silage.

Johannes Brandhuber holds his lost wedding ring. Photo / Getty Images

Four months after losing the ring, Brandhuber received a surprise phone call from his butcher, who revealed one of his workers had found it inside Herzal’s stomach.

“I’ve never encountered anything like this before, it’s extraordinary,” Josef Steinleitner, the 59-year-old butcher shop owner, told German news outlet Passauer Neue Presse.

It was a miraculous discovery by Steinleitner’s employee, who only found the ring because the 135-year-old family business insists on butchering animals by hand.

“It is a lucky coincidence to find such a thing,” said Steinleitner, who pointed out that metal fragments such as nuts or bolts are sometimes found in cow stomachs and would not immediately be considered unusual.

Brandhuber said he had already given up on finding the wedding ring. His wife, he said, was “very happy” as she had continued to believe the old ring would turn up eventually.

Herzal, which means little heart in the Bavarian dialect, received his name because he had a small white heart mark on his head, Passauer Neue Presse reported.

While the ring’s return marked a happy ending for Herzal’s owner, the same cannot be said for the cow.