Merry Christmas. I Got You a Tiny Cow.

Dear Santa, I’ve been so very good this year. Could you please bring me a miniature cow? I promise I’ll take excellent care of it. Please, please, pleaaaaaase!

While it might sound ridiculous, miniature cows have become a much-requested holiday gift in recent years.

“Just had one picked up this morning,” Allie Sine, a rancher in Wright City, Mo., said Thursday.

The animal, a brown micro heifer, cost $10,000 and was headed elsewhere in Missouri to be a surprise Christmas present for a 3-year-old girl. It was one of more than 15 miniature cows that Ms. Sine, 27, said she had sold this holiday season.

“At Christmastime it really picks up,” she said. “Usually, the wife has been wanting one and the husband comes around to it.”

The popularity of mini cows can be credited, at least in part, to TikTok, where videos of the creatures have earned millions of views. Ms. Sine, who goes by @minimooos on the platform, has 742,000 followers.

Once you’ve seen one of her videos, it’s easy to understand why the animals have become highly sought after. Miniature cows are cute and fluffy. They look like somebody aimed a shrink ray at a regular cow and fired.