Mackenzie Sullivan: Ellie Mae Farm Sanctuary

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.