This article originally appeared on VICE AU.
Australia’s biggest cow is a two-metre-tall steer by the name of Knickers. He weighs about 1,400 kilograms and, according to the ABC, has enough meat on him to produce more than 4,000 burgers. That is, hypothetically speaking—because Knickers the giant cow is so unfathomably huge that even the abattoir can’t handle him. He is too bootylicious for the butchery. Literally too big to be slaughtered. Too big to fail.
When owner Geoff Pearson took big old Knickers—who, at 194 centimetres, is taller than NBA star Stephen Curry—to auction last month, meat processors informed him that they quite simply would not be able to take the gargantuan beast. Knickers, in other words, has flouted conventional wisdom around “moderation” and “self-restraint” and effectively beaten the system: fattening himself up to the point where he is officially unsellable. Now the titanic steer is destined to live out his days on Lake Preston feedlot in Myalup, near Perth.
“It was too heavy. I wouldn’t be able to put it through a processing facility,” farmer Geoff told Perth Now. “So I think it will just live happily ever after.”
According to the BBC, Geoff said that Knickers, a Holstein Friesian, was “always a standout steer from the others, a bit bigger than the rest… so we thought let's leave him there, he's not hurting anyone.” Which is all well and good—except for the fact that Geoff didn’t exactly choose to “leave him there not hurting anyone.” He tried to sell him down the meat grinder, and was knocked back at market. If anyone is responsible for the fact that Knickers is still kicking, it’s Knickers. Geoff is like a parent who only starts loving their child once they become a superstar—and, by his own admission, he “never thought he would turn into a big knickers.”
These days big Knickers kind of just roams the meadows, doing as he pleases. Geoff says the other cattle follow him around in their hundreds like the bovine god that he is. He also suggests that the mega-cow will probably be around for a few years yet.
Unfortunately, though, Knickers is castrated, meaning he’s unable to pass on his powerful seed and will be the last of his noble, colossal bloodline. Still, it's not like he's the biggest cow in the world. That title belongs to an Italian ox named Bellino who, according to the Guinness World Records, stands at a whopping 2.03 metres.
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