Apr 29, 2021
Mackenzie Sullivan is the
founder and president of Ellie Mae Farm
Sanctuary.
The
story of EMFS started when Mackenzie was a student a the University
of Connecticut. For her Introduction to Animal Science course, she
had to choose a farm animal to train for an event at the end of the
semester. She ended up picking a Hereford girl with the ear tag
that read H864D; who she named Ellie Mae. Over the next few months,
Mackenzie grew an incredibly strong bond with Ellie
Mae.
At the end of the class assignment, the
university auctions off some of the farmed animals, and Ellie Mae
happened to be one of them. Mackenzie knew she had to do something
to try and save her. Unfortunately, when the time came, she was
outbid by a local farmer and completely devastated. She felt that
she had let Ellie Mae down. Luckily the farmer said that she could
come to visit Ellie Mae whenever she wanted to, so for the next two
years, she did every weekend. During this time Mackenzie visited as
many sanctuaries as possible and interned at a sanctuary in New
York.
When Ellie Mae was almost two years old she was
artificially inseminated and on September 16, 2018, Ellie Mae gave
birth to a baby girl who Mackenzie named, Zee. Mackenzie was
finally able to convince the farmer to let her have Ellie Mae and
Zee. So she and her partner, Billy, bought a trailer and moved the
two girls to their first property in May of 2019.