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One of our sows* had a three headed piglet recently which I had posted about on our family farm blog.

Well what do you know but I almost immediately got a phone call from the USDA in Washington, DC informing me that I would have to do triple tagging of this piglet, one for each head. Apparently the regulations are written such that each head in a herd is to be counted and the aren’t about to make an exception for a three headed pig.

The problem is the piglet only has two ears between the three heads so I told the nice USDA lady on the phone that there was no place to put the third ear tag. She said that didn’t matter, I would have to buy one of those micro-chip injecting systems ($1,500) or get the vet to come out to do it ($150). You can guess which way I’m going on that one!

She said what ever I do the tags must be serialized such that the numbers for the three heads are in order reading from left to right. Apparently there is a new regulation that when animals are having their chips read they have to be done in order to avoid confusing the computers because the USDA databases are recorded in stone - something called Read-Only-Memory which is written into silicone crystals. The nice lady explained that this is why they couldn’t remove people from the databases - apparently it is a security ‘feature’ to stop terrorists from creating phantom animals in the databases like happened in Australia.

The other thing the USDA lady mentioned is I must track the three Animal ID’s separately - that if any one of them left the farm I had to report that. Frankly, I think they’ll be sticking pretty close together.

So to assure compliance I called the vet and he’s coming out with a chip injector so we can get this little guy properly recorded into the national herd. He’s also bringing his camera, since mine broke. Hopefully tomorrow I can have some photos up showing this amazing three headed piglet.

Update 2:46 pm: The vet came this afternoon to tag the piglet(s?). Fluffy, as my younger son wants to call him after the three headed dog in the Harry Potter books, is doing fine. The vet took photos and is going to email them to me later tonight. The vet said that it may be possible to surgically correct the birth defect removing the extra two heads so that Fluffy can grow up to be a normal pig. Alternatively I have bids from NECI for making a three salad head cheese and from Barnum and Bailey Circus. He’s so unique I am not sure if I can part with them though. Still, the offers are tempting…

Update 5:01 pm: I just got the photo back from the vet of my son holding Fluffy. I’ve posted the photo on my other blog.