WEST OLIVE, Mich. — In the back of the Ottawa County Clerk/Register of Deed's Office, you'll find a document vault storage room.
"We keep any of our old vital records in here," said Supervisor Aubrey Williams.
It's filled with anything from birth and death certificates, to military discharge and marriage indexes.
“When Ottawa County became a county, we've got records going back that far," Williams said.
Mixed in with all those records is an "udderly" uncommon collection you've probably never "herd" of: The Dairy Farm Herd Register.
"Most of the information in here is (from the) early 20s," she said.
Before the days of microchipping and RFIDs, dairy farmers used ear tags and tattoos to track their cows.
Some took it a step further, by documenting their beef in a registration book.
“They have detailed drawings and sketches of every marking on all of their cows," Williams said. "Then, in part, also to prove the value of the cow — Where it was bred? How old the cow is, following the lineage?"
The registration process did come at a cost, but the "cow-culations" were far from over the moon.
“The pricing I think is the neatest part of it," Williams said. "As a member of the association, it costs $1 for a young female cow, $2 if that cow was over two years old."
If you don't got milk, maybe you got rats!
Well, the county wanted to help with that too.
"One of the other fun books we have is our Rat Warrants," Williams said. "It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. They put a warrant out for rats. The rat population had gotten so high in the county that the treasurer's office was willing to pay folks to kill their own rats.”
The rats had a 5-cent bounty on them here in Wild West Michigan.
“I'm just imagining folks coming in with buckets full of dead rats to prove that they killed some rats, and then getting paid out for it," Williams joked.
While the "rat-keteering" and "cow-taloguing" are no longer necessary, they do give us a unique peak into this place's past.
“It's something that is really neat, and it proves some of the history of our county," Williams said.