DAVIDSON—To quote Gordon Willner’s daughter Jessica Foster’s comment about the three-headed calf story: “No three-headed calves were harmed in this joke”.

A practical joke or an April Fool’s day prank isn’t born overnight. It takes a bit of thought and planning to pull it off.

In the case of the three-headed calf story that appeared on the front page of the April 1 edition of The Davidson Leader, this three-headed calf was born 20 years ago.

In 1999 I visited the Wilson Museum in Dundurn, where a stuffed two-headed calf that had been born in the area was on display. I found it fascinating and a freaky thing to look at.

The year before, I worked at a newspaper in Cold Lake, Alta. April 1, 1998 happened to occur on our publication day, so we played a joke that our offices had been flooded by spring runoff. Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, we created convincing images of water that was a metre deep threatening the computers. We even had coffee cups and rubber ducks bobbing in the floodwater. We included a story about how we persevered through this natural disaster to bring people the April 1, 1998 edition of their paper.

Despite the fact our offices were located on higher ground and the land around was bone dry, people fell for it, hook, line and sinker.

After seeing that two-headed calf in Dundurn, I decided if I ever got another chance I would do an April Fool’s Day joke using a three-headed calf.

The first opportunity was April 1, 2002, however, I didn’t own The Davidson Leader at the time and I was on a maternity leave with my first child.

The next time that April Fool’s Day was on a Monday, which is our publication day, was April 1, 2013. I started to make a plan, and then realized April Fool’s Day was also Easter Monday and we would be unable to distribute the paper until April 2.

After that, I hadn’t given it much thought until I realized in February of this year that April 1 landed on a Monday.

The calf was born March 24, the day I wrote the story, but the pump of believability was primed, so to speak, with the news that a cow near Leross, Saskatchewan had given birth to quadruplets in late March.

The story was easy to write. After a straightforward start, about a quarter of the way through, the reader was introduced to Dr. April Fool AKA Olaf Lipro. He is a reoccurring character in my April Fool’s Day pranks. Last April Fool’s Day he was a bylaw nuisance officer employed in the Inspections and Investigations Department of the City of Saskatoon. On April 1 last year, my husband received a letter from Inspector Lipro requiring him to obtain a backyard skating rink permit due to complaints that his skating rink was deemed an eyesore and failed to comply with City’s backyard rink regulations. The aftermath of that letter was fun to watch….he even filled out the City’s online forms to obtain a building permit so he could bring his rink into compliance.

…Back to the three-headed calf, the pug/Rottweiler pups was the second clue that something about this story was a bit fishy as was the detail the young vet had to consult his textbook while performing his first C-section on the cow.

After doing a bit of research on the website wikiHow regarding how to perform a C-section on a cow, the story took off from there.

I saved the reference to the fictional Newt Scamander for last, hoping it would tip off many readers to the fact it was a joke.

I let my children read a draft of the story. They immediately wanted to come out to the Willner Farm to see it, even my16-year-old daughter believed it. This was a bit disappointing because we had watched the Newt Scamander character in the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a few days before.

The story needed to be more preposterous, so I added the bit about using straws from Tim Hortons and Twisted Sisters to suck out amniotic fluid. We double-checked on Friday prior to publication that Twisted Sisters was still closed for the season. Imagine my dismay on Monday when I saw on social media that the Chamberlain eatery had opened for the season April 1.

The key to the story was the fantastic Photoshop skills of Leanne Read, who had taken a picture of the calf that was born on her and Troy’s family farm. She even fooled her mother in-law. But we couldn’t have pulled it off without the consent of a well-respected farmer. Thank you Gord Willner.

So folks, now you know the rest of the story…

To all the people who believed there was indeed a three-headed calf born, I hope you are able to chuckle about it and not be too sore about being fooled.

It happens to me every April Fool’s Day too, just ask my husband who’s burned me quite a few times.

Readers are safe from these hijinks for the foreseeable future.

The next time April 1 lands on a Monday is in 2024, but this is also an Easter Monday.

Rest assured that you may continue to trust The Davidson Leader as a reliable source of local news. We appreciate your support. As a point of interest…this spring, local shed hunters have been finding spiral shaped horns northeast of Davidson and Kenaston. This coincides with reports of sightings in the Allan Hills east of Hanley of a wild horse with a horn protruding from its head…you may read more about it on April 1, 2030.

Lots to read this week including: Craik Skating Carnival, Music Festival, Peewee Huskies provincials, Raiders Hoopla, and much more.

To read the full paper, you’ll need to subscribe. Phone 306-567-2047, email davidsonleader@sasktel.net or click the Subscribe button.

The Davidson Leader is available at these fine retailers: Davidson – Stedmans, Shell, Riverbend Co-op Gas Bar and Food Store, The Davidson Leader; Kenaston: KC Distributors; Craik – Biway Groceries.

DAVIDSON—Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not descended on Davidson last Monday, March 25 to verify the birth of a three-headed calf.

The tricephalic red angus cross calf was born at about 2 a.m. on Gordon Willner’s farm west of Davidson. It weighed 113 pounds.

It had been just another day on the farm during calving season before the epic event took place.

The cow was expected to calve anytime, so she was being monitored. As her time approached, it became apparent the birth was not progressing as it should.

Concerned, Willner put his arm inside the cow and felt one and then a second head.

Assuming it was a set of twins, he called for assistance.

Dr. Olaf Lipro, a large animal veterinary medicine resident at the University of Saskatchewan, answered the call for help.

He arrived at the farm and performed an examination, confirming there were indeed two heads. As the birth failed to progress, he decided to perform an emergency cesarean section.

This was Lipro’s first emergency C-section on a cow. He said he had performed one about three weeks ago on a pug that was unable to deliver her pug/Rottweiler pups.

“That went fairly well, so I thought getting these twins out of Gord’s cow should be a piece of cake,” Lipro said.

The cow was given a local anesthetic and then Lipro performed the procedure as outlined in his textbook. As he pulled one hind leg out, he grabbed the second hind leg and attached it to a calving chain and gave a mighty tug.

The calf wouldn’t budge.

He said he was surprised with how difficult it was to pull the calf out. The pug/Rottweiler pups came out easily, he noted.

With time and the cow’s life in the balance, they had to work quickly in order to get the calf out safely.

Lipro pulled on the chains with all his might. Finally the calf came free.

As he pulled it out of the uterus, he was shocked to discover what he thought was the first calf of a set of twins was in fact a three-headed calf.

“I was gob smacked, absolutely gob smacked,” Lipro said.

He said he’s heard of two-headed calves being born, but never a three-headed calf.

He said his first instinct was to take out his iPhone and post it on social media.

Then he remembered that he had a job to do.

He checked the calf’s airways—all three of them —to make sure the calf could breathe. One of the heads, the middle one, was struggling. Lipro said he had to clear the amniotic fluid from its nostrils. Some people use a piece of straw, but Lipro said he was taught a new method. He said he uses the straw from a Tim Hortons Iced Capp, inserts it into a nostril and sucks out the offending fluid. He said this is a technique other cattle producers may want to use in their cow-calf operations. He said a straw from a Twisted Sisters milkshake would also do in a pinch. He cautioned farmers from relying on this, however, because Twisted Sisters is still closed for the season.

After he had the calf breathing, he turned his attention to the cow. He cleaned her wound and stitched her up.

The calf was lying on the ground and having difficulty sucking a bottle so Lipro quickly tubed colostrum in through its left head.

“Then I thought, I might never get another chance to do this, so I tubed the right head too just to see if I could.”

The calf started sucking on its own, but had to be bottle fed for the first 48 hours as it struggled to its feet. By day three, it was able to stand. Nursing proved to be a challenge as all three heads butted with one another as they attempted to latch on.

Lipro said prognosis for the calf isn’t good. Two-headed calves rarely survive more than a few days, and a three-headed calf…Lipro said, “Only time will tell.”

This could be the first three-headed calf in history, although mention was made of one being born in 1893 in Illinois.

In the Jan. 13, 1893 edition of the Mattoon Gazette, out of Mattoon, Coles County, Illinois, the following report was published: “As we go to press a Lafayette farmer reports a three-headed calf born in the neighbourhood just southeast and a little north of the Monroe school house. He requests concealment of his name that the guilty party may be brought to justice.”…whatever that means.

Lipro said he did post a photo on Instagram, which is how Guinness World Records and Ripley’s ended up swooping into Davidson. He expressed regret for bringing all this attention to the Willner farm. “I let my ego get the better of me,” Lipro said. “As soon as I saw it was a tricephalic calf, I began thinking about how I could use this as my thesis topic when I do my PhD under Dr. Newt Scamander at vet med’s College of Large and Unusual Animals.”

DAVIDSON—Minor ball players hit the streets of Davidson Saturday, collecting bottles for batting practice.

They conducted a bottle drive to raise money to buy a batting cage.

The initiative is being spearheaded by Byron Dahl, coach of Davidson’s under-10 baseball team.

He wants to get a freestanding batting cage so Davidson’s minor baseball and softball teams may hone their skills.

He’s looking at a batting tunnel with fabric netting that is 70 feet long, 10 feet wide and 10 feet tall.

He said it could be set up in the rink so teams can train with it indoors in April until the weather and diamonds are fit for practicing outdoors.

The cage costs about $2,500.

He said he approached the Davidson Junior Athletic Association (JAA) for funding, but was advised that the JAA couldn’t justify this large expense for baseball when most of its revenues come from hockey and therefore, hockey fees would be subsidizing baseball. Davidson has seven minor ball teams this year.

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