Trending News: A farmer in the United States was shocked when one of her cows gave birth to a two-headed calf. Leslie Hunewill, who has been working on her family's ranches in Nevada and California for many years, noticed that the heifer was struggling to deliver its first calf. When examining the heifer, Leslie noticed that a head and the front legs were in the birth canal. Though the calf did not seem too large for the heifer to give birth, a lump was felt behind the head on one side. It was only later that Leslie realized that the calf had two heads, which is a rare occurrence that happens when an embryo tries to split into two separate embryos to create identical twins, but the split is never completed.
Leslie, who had never seen a two-headed calf before, explained that the calf's body was small, but the head seemed unusually large. The calf was eventually delivered using obstetrical chains and a calf jack. Unfortunately, the calf did not survive, but the mother's pain was eased by grafting an orphaned calf that was being fed on a bottle onto her.
Leslie said that the experience was a bit shocking, and even though it took a minute to process that there were two heads, she kept watching the short video clip of it over and over again.
Leslie shared that two-headed cows are produced in 0.039% of births, roughly equivalent to one in 2,500. She also recalled that her agriculture teacher in high school had a stuffed and mounted two-headed calf in the classroom, which was old and moth-eaten by the time she saw it. She never expected to witness a real one in her lifetime.
