A cow at Maya Higa’s animal sanctuary is bullying stream viewers for treats, and they love it

If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s animals. And if there’s anyone who knows how to tap into the power of that love to raise charitable funds, it’s streamer Maya Higa, whose cow Winnie is becoming a bona fide Twitch star herself.

Higa came to streaming in 2019, after getting degrees in agricultural education and communications, and completing internships at Zoo to You Conservation Ambassadors, Charles Paddock Zoo, and Free Flight Exotic Bird Sanctuary. She didn’t plan to stream about animals–in fact, her streamer friends encouraged her to get into the musical side of things after she posted a clip of herself singing on Instagram, so she mainly sang and played the guitar.

But one day while streaming, she featured juvenile red-tailed hawk Bean, whom she was professionally rehabilitating. The overwhelming viewer response to Bean and Higa’s passion for conservation changed the trajectory of her content, and Higa began making plans to use her streaming presence to launch her own animal rescue.

That paid off in 2021, when she successfully raised a founding fund of $500,000 in one 24-hour livestream, auctioning off items like a golden shovel and T-Pain’s Gucci slippers. Soon after, Alveus Sanctuary opened its doors in Austin, Texas, as a nonprofit rehab center and virtual educational hub for people interested in learning about North America’s wildlife.

Unfortunately, Alveus was impacted by the recent Texas flash floods. All animals and staff were reported safe, but the sanctuary’s access road was destroyed. Streamers like Valkyrae rallied to Higa’s support, and raised over $180,000 to help her rebuild.

But Alveus is also raising money thanks to a Red Angus cow named Winnie the Moo. Livestreams of animals at rescues, aquariums, and zoos became popular during COVID lockdowns, giving humans a chance to experience nature from afar, and in some cases giving animals the kind of interaction they needed to continue feeling safe once IRL visitation returned. Some organizations have stopped streaming by now, but others, like Monterey Bay Aquarium and Alveus, run 24-hour streams of their animals.

Alveus’s dedicated Twitch channel has 315,000 followers, and at press time has around ~1,200 concurrent viewers. The stream is multi-camera, showing animals from around the rescue. There’s Awa and Akela, a pair of wolf hybrids, crows Abbott and Coconut, Fenn and Reed the red foxes, Pushpop the tortoise…and, of course, there’s Winnie.

As Dexerto reports, there’s two things making Winnie a top-tier streamer:

1. Alveus has hooked up a system that lets stream viewers donate money to give her treats via an automatic feeder
2. Winnie has a very large personality. She knows exactly where treats come from, and if viewers dare to stop donating, she vigorously headbutts the trough and gives a big ol’ demanding moo right into the camera.

Winnie originally came from a cattle operation in Oklahoma, and with Alveus now serves as an ambassador for the beef industry, educating people on how “the massive demand for beef around the world has led to vast deforestation and land clearing to provide space for cattle farming, resulting in habitat loss in critical ecosystems like the Amazon Rainforest, as well as the methane generated contributing to global warming,” Alveus says.

She also has her own plush coming out from Youtooz.

For those worried Winnie will pack on a little weight from overzealous fans, not all the money being raised (so far $5,600 of a $10,000 goal) is going into her belly. Alveus says donos are used to buy feed, pay vet bills, and upkeep habits for all of the sanctuary’s animals.

Higa also chimed in on Twitter to make sure people know Alveus feeds Winnie staple foods, too.

“Just so everyone knows these are just treats for Winnie,” she said. “[S]he absolutely gets fed every day in addition to this.”

With the news cycle pretty dark these days, we’re happy to get to spotlight a more lighthearted story. We know the internet loves dogs and cats, but hey–cows need snoot boops too.