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Farmer Mark Krombholz of Merrill, WI was minding his own business, about to feed his new calf when it hit him – Lucy has two noses. It seems Krombholz didn’t notice anything particularly special about his new calf, born on May 4, until he took her into the barn to feed her.

“I went to feed her a bottle of milk, and I thought maybe she’d been kicked in the nose and there were two noses there,” said Krombholz. The cow’s second nose is smaller and sits atop the first nose – both appear to be functional.

“It looked like she was comfortable laying there in her bedding and breathing and spunky just like you want to see,” said breeder Scott Grund. “It’s just that she’s got two noses.”

Though this type of deformity isn’t usually rooted in genetics, breeders do keep track of mutations. “We fill out a form, send that on to the company in Shawano and they will keep record of it,” Grund said. “If by chance this would occur more than a few times, they would start looking at the sire that we’re using.”

Lucy is the second calf with extra parts to be born in recent weeks. A six-legged cow was born in Litchfield, NE on April 29. That animal, born on Brian Slocum’s Litchfield farm, has also got both male and female reproductive organs. David Smith, a veterinary specialist at University of Nebraska, Lincoln, said that the calf’s dual sex indicates it is the product of embryos for fraternal twins becoming fused in early development. “He’s a real freak,” said Slocum. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Though calves like this don’t usually survive long because of internal complications, the 85-pound Angus calf seems as full of life as the others on the farm, according to Slocum.