Mike Fisher spent his career on the ice. He had never bought a cow in his life until the December his wife asked for a gift you can’t find at the mall.
His wife is Carrie Underwood, the country singer who won “American Idol” back in 2005. Mike is a retired NHL hockey player who captained the Nashville Predators. The two married in 2010 and have two sons, Isaiah and Jacob. In December 2020, Isaiah was 5 and Jacob was 1.
That month Mike asked the usual question. Carrie told Country Now, “My husband said, ‘what would you like for Christmas’ and I said ‘I would like cows,'” and she meant every word.
It made sense for her. Carrie grew up on her parents’ small cattle farm in Checotah, Oklahoma, and cows are her favorite animal. On “Late Night with Seth Meyers” she put it simply: “they’re like big dogs to me.”
Mike didn’t sit on it, either.
“He slapped some Wranglers on and put his hat on and he was at the sale two days later,” Carrie told Seth Meyers.
That’s where the hockey star got a little lost. The auctioneer talked so fast that Mike wasn’t fully sure what he’d agreed to by the time it was over. Carrie’s retelling of how he walked in the door afterward is the funniest part of her chat with Seth, and it’s worth hearing in her own voice.
Carrie tells Seth Meyers how Mike bought the cows
Here’s how she summed up his report from the sale: “He said ‘I don’t know what happened, I think we got females, I’m not sure.’ ‘We just raised our little paddle a couple times and next thing you know they’re loading up two cows to bring home.'”
And that’s how two females ended up on the family’s farm outside Nashville.
Carrie couldn’t have been happier. She told Cheryl Hickey of ET Canada, “He got me cows, which is what I wanted. They’re my favorite animal. I love them, they make me so happy.”
Of course, new pets need names. That job went to Isaiah.
The 5-year-old kept it very simple. “My son named them Brownie and Oreo because one’s brown and one is black and white,” Carrie told Country Now.
Hard to argue with a kid’s logic there.
Carrie made it clear the cows are pets only. And she already had an idea about who might join them. “I think our next [animal] is going to be donkeys because they’re good to have as far as, like, coyotes go on the farm,” she said. She added that they could “just keep getting more and more chickens!”
Taste of Country covered the story that Christmas with its own short clip, and it’s a quick, fun look at Carrie’s very country present.
Taste of Country on Carrie’s Christmas surprise
Mike shared the auction on his Instagram story that December, so the cow purchase wasn’t a secret for long.
Farm life is still a big part of who Carrie is. In March 2026 on “The View,” she described what home really looks like for her: “I’m usually covered in dirt, or I have farm animals everywhere, or I’m covered in poop or whatever it is.”
So the girl from Checotah got her cows, and her husband got a crash course in cattle auctions. Their oldest boy got the fun part.