A giant steer in Australia is so massive, so utterly enormous, it towers over its herd and is too big to kill.
"Knickers," a humongous Holstein-Friesian, stands over 6 feet, 4 inches tall (76 inches), weighs more than 3,000 pounds and is billed as the biggest steer in Australia by its owner Geoff Pearson, according to Australian TV's "Today Tonight."
Pearson, who bought Knickers for $400, but said his value is now much more than that, had no idea the bovine would grow to such giant proportions.
"We knew that he was always going to grow into a big steer, but we never realized he'd get this big," Pearson told the television show.
The 7-year-old cow is so big, he is weighed on a platform scale, which is used for measuring the weight of groups of animals.
But his size is also what has saved him. He’s literally too big to kill in the normal stockyards.
"He was too big to go into the export plant's chain," Pearson told the TV show.
Knickers will live out his life on Pearson’s farm in Myalup in western Australia where he manages the herd, which follows his every move.
"They all look up to him, obviously, and wherever Knickers moves, they move, and he's pretty much just the leader of the pack and coaching everybody where they need to be going," Pearson told "Today Tonight."
While Knickers might be the largest steer in Australia, the world’s largest bovine title went to an ox named Bellino, who measured around 79 inches in 2010 at a show in Rome.
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