Custodian of the cow
When Lowcountry skies darken and the wind starts picking up, plenty of newcomers are quick to start packing their bags. But for those in the know, nobody really moves before asking the most important question:
“Is the cow still up?”
Yes, the Coburg Cow, which sits atop a 10-foot raised platform at 901 Savannah Hwy. in West Ashley, is often recognized as Charleston’s top weather forecaster. Ahead of particularly bad weather, and especially wind, the cow comes down. Its disappearance is a very visible cue for locals to get out of Dodge — or at least batten down the hatches.
“People just started noticing,” said West Ashley real estate agent Charlie Smith. “It’s like seeing Jim Cantore on The Weather Channel. We usually stay during most storms, but if I ever saw Jim out there taking the cow down, I’d get the hell out of town.”
The position of Bessie, the Coburg Cow, can be an indicator for area residents as to the estimated severity of approaching major storms
Chief Meteorologist for WCSC TV Bill Walsh added that he tells people during storm broadcasts whether the cow is up or down.
“People watch the weather on TV,” he said. “They get information about it from their apps and from the newspaper. But sometimes, the most reach for a storm coming is the Coburg Cow and whether it’s gone or not. I love looking at it.”
The cow rose to prominence first in 1959 to advertise the then-local Coburg Dairy, founded in 1920. But the cow, known affectionately as “Bessie,” remained in place after dairy operations moved to North Charleston in 1990. Originally a plastic cow rotating at the entrance of the dairy, the cow has undergone several changes — eventually being replaced by wooden and now fiberglass versions. Its tail has long been a target of vandalism, and people have been known to climb on top and ride Bessie before barriers were put in place.
“Two of the tails have been ripped off,” said the Custodian of the Cow, who prefers to remain nameless so city folk don’t bug him to death when a storm is approaching. “The current cow — the tail is fiberglass and molded into the body. In the past they would hang down like a real tail, but people would go over and yank them off. It wasn’t easy to fix.”
The man behind the cow
The Custodian has about five cows in total, though only two actually go up nowadays, he told the Charleston City Paper during a conversation that some might characterize as guarded or even “top secret.” One version is brown and white and features a bottle of chocolate milk. A red-painted cow advertises egg-nog each winter.
“I’ve always taken care of it one way or another,” he said. “It was in 1987 or so that I started making the decision to leave the cow up or take it down during storms.”
He explained the “complicated” decision-making process, which isn’t full of modern spreadsheets, dew points, computer graphics, one-upmanship from TV stations or the hurricane guru Cantore.
“I just watch the weather and make a gut call,” he explained, adding that sometimes he calls a buddy who used to work with the Air Force Weather Division for advice. “A few years ago, I yanked the cow down because I knew it was going to be a double-hitter [storm] … but people started raising hell about me pulling the damn cow down for no reason. Two days later, a major storm came through.”
Other times, it’s the opposite. The most recent example being Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall in Florida earlier this year and moved across Georgia to hit Charleston as a big blow of a tropical storm.
“My wife and I were on vacation, and I was watching the weather,” the Custodian said. “I was getting phone calls, and everybody on the internet is saying, ‘The cow’s down,’ so I started worrying that maybe the cow was ‘down-down,’ as in, fell down. I got ahold of family who told me it was still up. Well, I checked the weather again, and I knew even if it came in, it wasn’t going to be a bad storm, so I just made the call to leave it up.
“I was like, ‘Leave me the hell alone, people. It’s not even a bad storm!’ ” he added, laughing. “I was getting Facebook messages, and I said, ‘I don’t want to deal with this.’ All of my friends know I take care of the cow, of course, but I don’t want everyone knowing.”
In the winter of 2016, the Custodian said he made the decision to pull the cow down ahead of a particularly bad storm coming in, but he couldn’t find a crew to remove it.
“I went out with a tractor and a lifter with some long boards on it, and my brother and I took it down ourselves,” he said. “We were just laughing the whole time, saying, ‘I can’t believe we got this cow down with this rig.’ Why it didn’t fall off and we didn’t break it, I don’t know.”
Not just a warning sign
The Coburg Cow isn’t just an omen of stormy weather. Even when the skies are clear, passersby have plenty of reasons to look up, especially around the holidays.
“It’s fun,” the Custodian said. “My wife and I decorate it up as much as we can.”
A few years ago, a blue calf even showed up next to the cow to supposedly commemorate the birth of a baby in the Hanckel family, the original owners of the Coburg Dairy.
“It’s the sense of humor,” said longtime West Ashley resident Joan Perry. “They bother to dress it up for events and holidays. I’ve seen it with a graduation cap. … And when all the lights are on, it’s a real landmark.”
In fact, Google Maps has its own listing of the Coburg Cow, characterizing it as a landmark complete with Yelp reviews.
“It’s always been beloved,” Smith said. “I remember when I was in college, the boys would get drunk and go ride the cow. It was a rite of passage.”
He added the suburb used to have more tall signs.
“They’re all gone now, except for the Coburg Cow, because it was landmarked at some point. It really came into prominence as the sole survivor — all that signage being gone now due to newer height restrictions. The whole landscape of West Ashley changed literally overnight. It was very strange, but the cow stayed. It’s one of the few things of any historical value we’ve been able to save in West Ashley, and people appreciate that.”
Weathering other cow-tastrophes
Literal storms haven’t been the only threats to the Coburg Cow’s legacy, however. Having been up for more than half a century, it’s had its fair share of scares, beginning with Coburg’s relocation to North Charleston in 1990.
Coburg Dairy changed hands several times after its relocation, having been first bought in 1998 by Dean Foods, the largest dairy company in the United States at the time. Dean was later bought out by Suiza Dairy, a Puerto Rican brand. Eventually, the local dairy was sold to an investment group and was finally bought by Borden Dairy, which had operations in South Carolina, in 2011.
The cow survived all of the changing of hands, and representatives from Borden reportedly vowed to keep the cow in place. But Borden shuttered its South Carolina operations in 2022, giving locals another cow-tastrophe to fear.
Thankfully, the cow held fast yet again. The Custodian has even started repainting the collection, replacing the Borden iconography with the original Coburg logos once again.
“It’s important to have a sense of place,” Smith said. “The cow has been a meeting place for people for I don’t know how long. I’ve told people to meet me at the Coburg Cow so many times I’ve lost track.
“If it can literally weather the storms … it’s just a successful historic preservation story for West Ashley.”
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