This past Monday, March 25, DAVIDSON—Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not arrived in Davidson to confirm the birth of a three-headed calf. At Gordon Willner’s farm, west of Davidson, a three-headed red angus cross calf was born at 2 am. I weigh 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 give birth at any moment. As the due date approached, it became clear that the delivery was not going as planned. Willner slipped his arm into the cow, worried, and felt one, then a second head. He asked for help, assuming it was a set of twins.
After administering a local anesthetic to the cow, Lipro carried out the surgery as described in his textbook. He grabbed the second hind leg and hooked it to a birthing chain before yanking it out. The hatchling 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 safely remove the calf. Lipro yanked on the shackles with all his might. The calf finally broke 100se.He was required to see that what he believed to be the first calf of a set of twins was actually a three-headed calf when he took it out of the uᴛᴇʀus.
“I was totally gobsmacked,” Lipro explained. He has heard of two-headed calves being born before, but never a three-headed calf, he said. His initial reaction, he added, was to take the iPhone off him and post it on social media. He then remembered that he needed to get back to work. He checked the airways of the 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 a bit of straw, but Lipro claims that he learned a new technique. He claims that he sucks the troublesome fluid out of one nostril using the straw of a tіm Hortons Iced Capp.
Other ranchers may want to use this strategy on their cow and calf farms, he added. In a pinch, he added she, a Twisted Sisters milkshake straw might do the trick. farmers should be careful of relying on this, as Twisted Sisters is still closed for the season. She shifted her focus to the cow when she got the calf to breathe. She bandaged her wound after cleaning it. Lipro quickly put colostrum on the calf’s left head because she was lying on the floor and having difficulty sucking on a bottle. “Then I realized that she would never get another chance, so I also gave her a tube in her right head, just to see if she could.”
The calf began to suckle on its own after 48 hours of struggle, but needed to be bottle-fed for the first 48 hours as it struggled to its feet. He was able to hold on to the third day. The infirmary became difficult due to the fact that all three heads collided while trying to latch on. The prognosis for the calves, according to Lipro, is not good. A three-headed calf rarely survives for more than a few days, while a two-headed calf rarely survives for 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 implies.