Expensive Santa, I’ve been so excellent this yr. Might you please carry me a miniature cow? I promise I’ll take wonderful care of it. Please, please, pleaaaaaase!

Whereas it’d sound ridiculous, miniature cows have turn into a much-requested vacation present in recent times.

“Simply had one picked up this morning,” Allie Sine, a rancher in Wright Metropolis, Mo., mentioned Thursday.

The animal, a brown micro heifer, price $10,000 and was headed elsewhere in Missouri to be a shock Christmas current for a 3-year-old woman. It was one among greater than 15 miniature cows that Ms. Sine, 27, mentioned she had bought this vacation season.

“At Christmastime it actually picks up,” she mentioned. “Normally, the spouse has been wanting one and the husband comes round to it.”

The recognition of mini cows may be credited, at the very least partly, to TikTok, the place movies of the creatures have earned hundreds of thousands of views. Ms. Sine, who goes by @minimooos on the platform, has 742,000 followers.

When you’ve seen one among her movies, it’s simple to know why the animals have turn into extremely wanted. Miniature cows are cute and fluffy. They appear like any individual aimed a shrink ray at an everyday cow and fired.

“They’re like golden retriever canines,” Ms. Sine mentioned. “You’ll be able to simply stroll on the market and love throughout them.”

Alyssa Rorah, a 30-year-old rancher in Maquoketa, Iowa, seconded that.

“They’ll run round and play with you,” mentioned Ms. Rorah, who additionally has a well-liked TikTok account dedicated to small cows. “I get movies on a regular basis from households who’ve their youngsters operating round within the yard and their cows are taking part in with the children.”

The smallest cows, labeled as microminiature, stand below 36 inches at full maturity, whereas a miniature may be as tall as 42 inches. About one-third the scale of a normal cow, they’re nonetheless lots hefty. A miniature cow can vary from 500 to 650 kilos, Ms. Sine mentioned, and stay so long as 20 years.

Regardless of their cuteness and dog-like mannerisms, they aren’t meant to be saved indoors.

“I’ve seen some highly regarded folks on TikTok who do preserve them of their dwelling and different issues that aren’t life like,” Ms. Rorah mentioned. She urged that some folks might depict them as indoor pets solely on their social media accounts. “In actuality,” she continued, “that’s not what it seems to be like daily, to have your cow in the home. I do suppose that’s deceptive.”

Ms. Sine famous a morning routine video posted by a cow-fluencer that confirmed a lady waking up and giving a kiss to the little cow within the tiny pen subsequent to her mattress.

“I couldn’t think about the scent,” Ms. Sine mentioned.

(In equity, the cow’s proprietor explains within the video caption that she was filming the infant cow’s final day indoors, earlier than it headed to its everlasting dwelling within the barn.)

Ms. Sine mentioned that she was very specific about who will get to purchase one among her cows, which vary in worth from $8,000 to $20,000. She gently weeds folks out by asking them what number of acres of land they’ve and in the event that they already produce other livestock.

“We get lots of people who attain out they usually’ll say, ‘Effectively, we simply have a canine.’” Ms. Sine mentioned. “To these, we’ll simply say ‘No.’”

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recommends giving pets solely to individuals who have demonstrated an curiosity in caring for them and urges would-be miniature cow consumers to suppose forward. “There are fewer amenities that may take them in, ought to they not be a match for the recipient’s way of life,” an A.S.P.C.A. spokesperson mentioned.

Nonetheless, on TikTok at the very least, the recognition of little cows continues to develop.

In a current video, the comic Ashley Gutermuth warned folks in opposition to being tricked by social media’s rosy depiction of what it means for the typical suburbanite to share a house with a tiny cow: “You’ll be able to’t have a micro cow,” the comic says. “You can not have an indoor cow. You reside in a cul-de-sac!”