Giant cow in Oz avoids the slaughterhouse

A cow in Australia, standing 1.94 metres tall and weighing 1.4 tonnes, has avoided the abattoir, thanks to his size.

Knickers, the seven-year-old, is believed to be the biggest steer in a country home to millions of cattle.

When owner Geoff Pearson tried to put him up for auction last month, meat processors said they simply could not handle him - so Knickers avoided the abattoir.

He will now live out the rest of his life on Lake Preston feedlot in Myalup, 136km south of Perth, media reports said.

"Knickers lives on," says Pearson, who has been fielding calls from local and international journalists since the Australian public broadcaster drew attention to the enormous steer - a Holstein Friesian, but significantly taller than the average for that breed.

He was first bought as a "coach" - a steer that leads other cattle - at the age of about 12 months. Steers are castrated males.

"He was always a standout steer from the others, a bit bigger than the rest," Pearson was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Although "some of his mates" were sent for slaughter at an early age, "he was still a standout so we thought let's leave him there, he's not hurting anyone".

But after a few more rotations of cattle, the cattle farmers "realised he wasn't stopping growing". And now he's too big to sell.

Pearson - who owns about 20,000 cattle - reckons Knickers has a few years left.

"When he was young, when we first got him, we had a Brahman steer [a breed of cattle] which was a friend of his," explains Pearson. "So his name was bra... so we [had] bra and knickers.

"We never thought he would turn into a big knickers."