Knickers the steer is too beefy to become a burger

A staggering steer in Australia has the internet – and the colossal cattle’s owner – saying, “Holy cow.”

Meet Knickers: A beefy bovine from Western Australia towering nearly 6 feet, 4 inches and weighing over 3,000 pounds, according to PerthNow.com.

Owner Geoff Pearson, who thinks his large livestock may be unofficially Australia’s biggest steer, says that Knickers was just “too heavy” to be sold or killed for his meat.

“I wouldn’t be able to put it through a processing facility,” Pearson told PerthNow. “So I think it will just live happily ever after.”

According to Australia’s ABC News, 7-year-old Knickers, a Holstein Friesian, is double the weight of the average animal of its breed and more than a foot and a half taller. That makes him heavier than some cars and taller than some NBA players.

While the behemoth is notable, he’s still a couple of inches shorter than the world’s tallest steer: A chianina ox named Bellino, who measured more than 6 feet, 6 inches at a show in Rome in 2010, according to Guinness World Records.

Naturally, the brute had the internet abuzz.

A photo of Knickers tweeted by 7 News Central Queensland, owned by the same parent company as PerthNow, had garnered more than a thousand retweets in less than a day.

His name came about because another cattle Pearson had at the time – a Brahman steer – befriended him. “His name was bra … so we (had) bra and knickers,” he told BBC News.

The farmer said he let Knickers live throughout the years because of his size but eventually realized, “he wasn’t stopping growing,” BBC News reported.

Pearson also said that his other cattle follow the massive leader around by the hundreds.

“Whenever he wants to get up and start walking there’s a trail of hundreds of cattle following him,” he told ABC News. “We all know when Knickers (is) on the move.”

Read more at usatoday.com.