Last Monday, March 25, DAVIDSON—Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not came to Davidson to confirm the birth of a three-headed calf. On Gordon Willner’s farm, west of Davidson, a three-headed red Angus cross calf was born at 2 a.m. Weight 113 pounds. Before the momentous event, it had been just another day on the farm during calving season. The cow was being watched as she was going to calve at any moment. As the due date approached, it became clear that the delivery was not going as planned. Willner slid his arm into the cow, worried, and felt one, then a second head. He called for help, assuming it was a pair of twins.
The call for help was answered by Dr. Olaf Lipro, a large animal veterinary medicine resident at the University of Saskatchewan. He arrived at the rgoreгtу and conducted an investigation, concluding that there were two heads there. He opted to do an emergency C-section after the labor failed to progress. It was the first time Lipro performed an emergency cesarean section on a cow. He said he did one about three weeks ago on a pug who couldn’t give birth to her pug/rottweiler puppies. “That went really well,” Lipro continued, “so I thought getting these twins off Gord’s cow should be a piece of cake.”
After administering a local anesthetic to the cow, Lipro performed the surgery as described in his textbook. He grabbed the second hind leg and hooked it to a whelping chain before pulling it out with a strong tug. The calf refused to move. She was surprised at how difficult it was to get the calf out. She commented that the pug/Rottweiler puppies came out easily. With time running out and the cow’s life at stake, they needed to move quickly to get the calf out safely. Lipro pulled on the shackles with all his might. The calf finally broke 100se. He was asked to see that what he believed to be the first calf of a pair of twins was actually a three-headed calf when he took it out of the uᴛᴇʀus.
“I was totally speechless,” Lipro explained. He has heard of two-headed calves being born before, but never of a three-headed calf, he said. His initial reaction, he added, was to pull out his iPhone and post it on social media. He then remembered that he needed to get back to work. He examined the airways of his calf, all three of them, to make sure he could breathe. One of the heads, the one in the center, seemed to be in ᴅɪsᴛʀᴇss. Lipro said he had to clean amniotic fluid from the animal’s nose. Some others use some straw, but Lipro says he learned a new technique. He claims that he sucks the problematic fluid from one nostril using the straw of a tіm Hortons Iced Capp.
After administering a local anesthetic to the cow, Lipro performed the surgery as described in his textbook. He grabbed the second hind leg and hooked it to a whelping chain before pulling it out with a strong tug. The calf refused to move. She was surprised at how difficult it was to get the calf out. She commented that the pug/Rottweiler puppies came out easily. With time running out and the cow’s life at stake, they needed to move quickly to get the calf out safely. Lipro pulled on the shackles with all his might. The calf finally broke 100se. He was asked to see that what he believed to be the first calf of a pair of twins was actually a three-headed calf when he took it out of the uᴛᴇʀus.
The calf began to nurse on its own after 48 hours of struggling, but needed to be bottle-fed for the first 48 hours as it struggled to stand. He was able to maintain it on the third day. Nursing became difficult due to the fact that the three heads collided while trying to latch onto each other. The prognosis for the calves, according to Lipro, is not good. A three-headed calf rarely survives more than a few days, while a two-headed calf rarely survives more than a few days. “Only time will tell,” Lipro said. Although one was born in Illinois in 1893, this may be the first three-headed calf in history.
The following article appeared in the Mattoon Gazette on January 13, 1893, from Mattoon, Coles County, Illinois: “At the time of printing, a Lafayette farmer reports that a three-headed calf was born in the neighborhood just southeast and a little north of the Monroe School Building.” He asks that his identity be kept hidden so that the culprit can be brought to justice.” …Whatever he entails.
