Agri-tourism is one way farms and ranches make money in a challenging market environment. The topic for many a breakout session at producer meetings involves finding new and innovative ways to make a living - beyond running the combine header up and down the field come harvest.
February 2018
The County Line has missed its opportunity to become a sideshow attraction at the state fair or other venue. When a 6-footed calf was born in the winter of 2018, Randy contemplated contacting a traveling animal farm to gauge their interest. For awhile, a K-State veterinary student thought she might have a friend interested in buying it to become her clinic's "mascot."
However, as it turned out, No. 830 stayed in the County Line herd, making the move to and from summer pasture with its contemporaries. When we sold most of the 2018 calves this past February, we kept No. 830 at home in a pen of other misfits - cows who had swollen jaws but hadn't yet had or raised their latest offspring or old cows who would be culled from the herd after they raised their babies.
But last week, we rounded up this ragtag band of brothers and sisters and took some of them to Pratt Livestock. No. 830 was one of those that went through the sale barn.
When I first wrote about the calf, we assumed that the extra parts were associated with an undeveloped conjoined twin. We'd just seen "The Greatest Showman" and our unusual calf had me thinking about society's outcasts in a different way. (Click on the link to check out the song and more.)
However, our veterinarian Bruce Figger provided a fact sheet about Developmental Duplication from the American Angus Association. The abnormality has been long observed in Angus cattle. It was previously thought to be caused by conjoined twins or other anomalies during fetal development.
Instead, it was found to be a simply inherited recessive genetic condition passed through certain lines of Angus cattle. Animals affected with this condition can sometimes be born with an extra limb or part of an extra limb, a condition referred to as polymelia.
February 2018
The calf had its four limbs in the right place, and it moved just as freely as the other babies born during the same season. (Check out the video I took that winter of the calf and his mother.)
I took the photo below when we worked baby calves in the spring of 2018, and it was doing great. At that time, I wrote another blog post.
March 21, 2018
But since then, No. 830 has done a lot of growing.
August 21, 2019
This past week, we had time to gather and sort the cattle, so No. 830 got a ride to the Pratt sale barn, along with three cows.
None of them were prize specimens, so we didn't expect a huge paycheck from the sale.
Well, I didn't expect a huge payout. Randy joked with the sale barn manager that he expected a premium price for the extra legs. As we walked out of the office, I asked Randy: "He knows you're joking, right?!"
We got the check in the mail yesterday. No. 830 had weighed 715 pounds and brought in a measly $311 check, about the same amount that the cow with lump jaw had garnered. And so the story ends - gone, but probably not forgotten for awhile.
Since I published the first blog about our 6-footed calf in February, Randy has answered the question while at breakfast at Joan's Cafe. We've both fielded inquiries at the grocery store, the bank, at church and assorted other locations.
And the answer is this: It can run fast enough to escape as we were trying to load it into the trailer after working it and its group of contemporaries. (Not my fault, I'll have you know!) After a brief time of freedom, it went back to Peace Creek with its mom and others in the Class of 2018.
When I first wrote about the calf, we assumed that the extra parts were associated with an undeveloped conjoined twin. However, local veterinarian Bruce Figger provided a fact sheet about Developmental Duplication from the American Angus Association. The abnormality has been long observed in Angus cattle. It was previously thought to be caused by conjoined twins or other anomalies during fetal development.
Recently it was found to be a simply inherited recessive genetic condition passed through certain lines of Angus cattle. Animals affected with this condition can sometimes be born with an extra limb or part of an extra limb, a condition referred to as polymelia. If you're into genetics and a lot more information, check out the fact sheet.
But as you can see in the video I took a month ago, the baby is thriving and able to move around the pasture just as well as its contemporaries. And, as I said, it's now fast enough to get by two-legged people! I don't have video proof of that escapade. You'll just have to take my word for it!
A farm provides an unending textbook of nature's curiosities. At first glance, this slumbering baby calf looks like others in this Class of 2018.
But a closer look reveals that it has six feet.
It has the normal four limbs and can still move around the pasture. But it also has two other hooves and perhaps an extra shoulder. Randy wonders if it began life as a twin, and the twin didn't develop.
When we were younger, the state fair's midway had a side show with a hawker declaring into a microphone, "Come see the two-headed calf! It will amaze you. It will confound you. Step right up!" The movie, "The Greatest Showman," featured a bearded lady, a “dog boy” who looks like a human Chewbacca, a little person, a mixed-race trapeze artist and conjoined twins - just to name a few.
If we truly look at history and not the colorful musical version, P.T. Barnum likely exploited those who were different than society's norm by putting them in a Museum of Oddities.
But, at a pasture on The County Line, the only crowd that sees this oddity of nature - this 6-footed calf - is a flock of geese that dots the sky like black embroidery thread in a blue and white tapestry.
Their "catcalls" join the gentle moos of two mama cows, who can't seem to decide which one is the true mother to this unusual baby.
They focus on the smell of the calf, not its unusual appearance.
We don't know what will happen. Will it live? Could there be internal abnormalities that will cause its death? It's possible.
I've thought a lot about this calf since I walked away from it in the pasture. As I sat at my computer, trying to figure out a politically-correct way to write about it, I remembered a song from "The Greatest Showman."
In "This Is Me," the overreaching message is that it is our differences that make us special. The song, which has been nominated for an Academy Award, could serve as an anthem for the marginalized, disenfranchised, the bullied and the outcast.
Just some of the words say:
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I'm meant to be, this is me
Look out 'cause here I come
And I'm marching on to the beat I drum
I'm not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me.
Sunday evening, I watched the calf run and play with other calves in the pasture. (I should have shot a video. Maybe next time.) Its mother is taking care of it, and it appears to be thriving, in spite of its differences.
This little calf may not make it to adulthood. And, if it does, it won't bring top dollar at a sale barn. But maybe there's still a lesson to be learned in this dusty pasture, with only the geese above as my witnesses. Maybe the world would be a better place if we looked at people with a mother's eye instead of listening to the cacophony of voices that criticize and tear us down. It's worth considering, don't you think?
Another school shooting happened last week. This time, 17 people lost their lives in Florida. In the days after the shooting, I am discouraged by my Facebook feed. The hate doesn't just rain down in bullets in classrooms. It is perpetuated when people disagree with one another. Don't get me wrong: It's OK to disagree. But instead of honoring another's opinion and maybe thinking about something differently, people stand on their soap boxes and pontificate. No matter their "side" in the debate, they put down those who dare to disagree with them. I can almost "hear" the shouting as I scroll past another long thread of "conversation" typed into cyberspace, filled with words that denigrate the "other's" thoughts and seem to imply how "stupid" the other's opinion is.
Maybe I'm grasping for meaning in unlikely places. But it seems to me that we can do better. We can celebrate differences. We can see value in all people - whether their opinions line up exactly like ours or not.
