All God's Creatures: A 6-Footed Calf Update

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.)

6-footed calf from Kim Fritzemeier on Vimeo.

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.