What is "i lik the bred"?

It is a short four-line poem by British writer Sam Garland (Reddit's Poem_for_your_sprog) narrated by a cow in deliberately misspelled baby talk, written as a reply to an AskReddit story about a cow licking bread inside an 18th-century fortress recreation.

Where did "i lik the bred" come from?

Garland posted it on October 25, 2016 as a Reddit comment under Chamale's health-inspector story on r/AskReddit.

What does "i lik the bred" mean?

The misspellings parody a toddler-cow voice, and the piece reads as an unrepentant confession from a cow caught licking bakery bread. Later Tumblr parodies swapped the cow and the bread for other animals and foods.

How do you use "i lik the bred"?

Common convention is to write a four-line rhyming poem in the same misspelled voice, often narrated by an animal describing something it enjoys licking or eating, as seen in Sashayed's cat-licking variant and the Hindulaatti doggospeak song.

Is "i lik the bred" still popular?

The poem is treated as a classic of Reddit and Tumblr poetry circles; a Tumblr screenshot by phantomrose96 passed 127,000 notes within three months of the original 2016 post, and parody variants were still circulating into 2017.

"i lik the bred"

2016catchphraseclassic

Published November 5, 2026

Sam Garland, posting as Reddit's Poem_for_your_sprog, wrote a four-line poem about a cow licking bakery goods inside an 18th-century fortress recreation during an October 2016 AskReddit thread on health inspector violations. A Tumblr screenshot of the quatrain collected more than 127,000 notes within three months, and by January 2017 parodies, fan artwork and a SoundCloud song in doggospeak were borrowing its deliberately misspelled lines.

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Overview

Garland's gimmick on the Poem_for_your_sprog account is writing rhyming replies to AskReddit stories, and "i lik the bred" takes that habit to an absurd extreme. The quatrain reads like a toddler cow narrating its own crime in baby talk, with vowel swaps and dropped letters meant to sound bovine2. Readers adopted the broken spelling template within hours, writing their own four-line "lik" poems about other animals licking other things3.

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Parodies swapped the cow for cats and dogs, and swapped the bread for cats themselves1. Fan artworks drew the cow in colored pencil and MS Paint, and a SoundCloud track by Hindulaatti set the lines to melody in "doggospeak," the earnest misspelled voice from the doge family of memes5. A broader Tumblr tag collected months of these variants under "lik bred"6.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Reddit / Tumblr (viral spread)

Creator

Sam Garland

Date

2016

On October 25, 2016, a now-deleted Redditor opened an r/AskReddit thread asking health inspectors for the worst code violations they had seen on the job. Redditor Chamale answered with a story about his stepfather, a baker at an authentic 18th-century recreation of a New French fortress, where the visiting inspector spotted a cow wandering the grounds and licking all the bread2. Sam Garland, writing under the Reddit handle Poem_for_your_sprog, replied with the "i lik the bred" quatrain the same day, and the comment collected over 15,000 points before archiving3.

How It Spread

On the same October day, Tumblr user phantomrose96 posted a screenshot of the Reddit comment, which gathered more than 127,000 notes within three months1. The piece also spread on the fan-made r/poem_for_your_sprog subreddit, launched in December 2013 to collect Garland's rhymes3.

Ironic appreciation kept growing through late 2016 on Tumblr, feeding parodies and fan drawings6. Hindulaatti uploaded "cowdg" to SoundCloud on November 13, 2016, singing lines from several Poem_for_your_sprog pieces including "i lik the bred" in doggospeak5. On January 17, 2017, Tumblr user Sashayed posted a parody in which the cow licks cats instead of bread, reaching more than 17,000 notes in under 48 hours4.

Timeline

2013-12

Fan-made r/poem_for_your_sprog subreddit launched to collect Sam Garland's AskReddit poetry replies.

2016-10-25

Garland posts the "i lik the bred" quatrain as a reply to Chamale's cow-in-the-fortress story on r/AskReddit.

2016-10-25

Tumblr user phantomrose96 reposts a screenshot of the Reddit comment, which later collects 127,000+ notes.

2016-11-13

SoundCloud user Hindulaatti uploads "cowdg," a doggospeak song that sets lines from "i lik the bred" and other sprog poems to melody.

2017-01-17

Tumblr user Sashayed posts a parody where the cow licks cats instead of bread, reaching 17,000+ notes in two days.