A rare bird came into sight in eastern Iowa this weekend. A four-legged chicken was born in the Mississippi Valley Fair’s Expo building. Gary Kaase and his wife manage the display where the chick hatched.
“I was taking the chicks out and I thought that one was laying on top of the other. I saw four legs,” Kaase told Radio Iowa this morning, “and then I picked the chick up and I realized this was a real rare oddity that I had hatched here at the fair.”
Sunday was the last day of the fair in Davenport. The tiny chick is now at home on Kaase’s farm just outside of Eldridge. “He is running around, he’s keeping up with everybody, he’s eating, drinking,”Kaase said. “The future for this chick — we hope to do some educational things with him.”
Kaase plans to seek permission to take the chick to visit patients at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital and he’s hoping to line up other appearances. “With the kids…hopefully show them that life isn’t so bad,” Kaase said. “You can handle anything as long as you try.”
About two decades ago, Kaase took eggs to his daughter’s third grade classroom so the students could watch the chicks emerge from the shells. He and his wife now take incubators to dozens of classrooms and three fairs. “We bring in about three dozen eggs every day and we have a big glass incubator where people can actually see the chicks hatch,” Kaase said. “We have two barns set up, one for the chicks that we hatch, one for the ducks…Everything is educational.”
His daughter, by the way, became a veterinarian. She checked the chick out and pronounced him health. The family has not named him yet.
“He’s kind of a light yellow color,” Kaase told Radio Iowa. “I don’t know what he’s going to look like when he gets bigger. I’m sure he’ll change some colors.”
Kaase’s four-legged chick is motoring around on two legs. Kaase’s family has done some research about four-legged chickens. “All we could find is maybe one in 10 million,” Kaase says. “I’ve got to say it’s rarer than that. I’ve been doing this for probably close to 40 years as far as hatching and everything else and I had never even heard of it.”
Kaase’s name KAH-suh and the family’s farm is called Anything is Kaase-able.