Interestingly enough, we have a calf just like this at the vet college here in Saskatoon, SK, Canada right now too. She's a couple months old now, with all the spunk and energy you'd expect of a normal calf. She's been here for about a week now, last I heard they didn't know exactly what they were going to do with her in the long-term.
Weird to know of 2 stories of a seemingly incredibly rare disorder so close together.
I talked to a commercial guy who said he had some cleft mouth calves that were sired by Charolais and out of Santa Gertrudis cows. He was convinced that removing the Charolais bull stopped the phenomenom.
Ok, so very interesting story, but then the minute I open the link-- Red and white Calf-- Shorthorn of course! I am not in a great mood today-- and so I am immediately thinking-- GREAT-- of course it would have to be a shorthorn calf-- like we don't have enough defects and genetic problems already. Another excuse for the commercial guys to say look at what your crappy breed has to offer....
So how much with this additional genetic test cost us to register our shorthorn calves now??? (SARCASM) :-\ ;D
Relax, SH4us. It's not a heritable defect, just an 'accident'...structures - in this case, the heart and great vessels - didn't migrate to their proper location during fetal development.
It's not a terribly common occurrence - but not unknown... I've seen photos, but have never seen one in over 35 years of veterinary practice & diagnostic pathology.
There are documented cases of heifers with 'ectopia cordis' living long enough to breed, calve, and lactate, though I would suspect that most die at a young age. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3095170/