Meet Beef: a mega-sized Albertan steer with a record-breaking height

It was enjoy at number one vision when Jasmine Entz locked eyes with Beef's stunted, slimy personify covered in straw that had emerged from the womb at the first slip of dawn in August 2017.

"He looked at me and I looked at him and I thought: that one's cute," said Entz, of Vulcan County, Alta.

She asked her boss at the dairy farm if she could take the calf home once he was weaned off milk. He said yes.

For reasons she didn't understand, Entz, 29, had always wanted a steer she could ride.

She had no intention of raising one that would become a global phenomenon, taller than a pickup truck, as heavy as a rhinoceros — her own bovine version of Clifford the Big Red Dog.

The Guinness Book of World Records announced Beef as the world's tallest living steer at 1.95 metres tall (six foot five), edging out by one centimetre the record held by an Oregon steer named Romeo.

Beef, now eight years old, last weighed in at 1,100 kilograms (2,400 pounds), when officials took his measurements two years ago as the first step in confirming the record.

He's grown since then, Entz said, which Beef confirmed when he could no longer fit inside his trailer earlier this year.

About 45 kilograms of hay is needed each day to power the hulking Holstein, Entz said, at a cost of about $400 a month.

"I was always told that steers never stopped growing. And I was like, 'That's got to be a lie,"' she said. "Except here we are, at eight years old, and he's still growing."

Beef is a breed of cattle often fed to eventually be slaughtered for meat. Despite his name, he was never meant to be anything more than a pet.

Entz started training him to pull a cart and later to saddle up and ride.

She was riding him by the time he turned two, and it was sheer joy, she said.

But that only lasted one season. That year, Entz gave Beef the winter off after he was injured. She hasn't saddled him up since, in part because she'd need to get a customized tack to fit his body.

In those intervening years, she said she realized through suggestions from friends that Beef's size likely put him in record territory.

Beef is now living out his days grazing across the farm with his "best buddy" Josie, a white cow covered in black speckles, a horse named Talent and more than 50 miniature goats.

"He literally lounges. That's the best way to put it — he doesn't do much of anything," Entz said.

Except eat.

And that makes fall a special time.

Last year, Beef needed just three hours to polish off an entire post-Halloween pickup full of pumpkins.

"He sees a pumpkin coming towards him," said Entz, "and he lights right up."
 

The Canadian Press

Matthew Scace is a reporter for The Canadian Press.

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