Duck gets 3-D-printed replacement for foul foot
Jul-01-2013

Buttercup the duckling hatched in November last year with one foul foot - his left flipper bent backwards and faced the wrong way. When his caregivers discovered he had trouble walking, they decided to suit him up with a replacement.

Since custom-made feet are hard to come by, Mike Garey, Buttercup's friend at the Feathered Angels Waterfowl Sanctuary in Arlington, Tenn., decided to make a twin.

The only way to get a foot for Buttercup, Melissa Ragsdale, president of 3-D printing services at NovaCopy in Nashville told NBC News, was to "scan Buttercup's sister's foot and turn that into a 3-D model and print that out."

That's exactly what Garey did, with a little help from NovaCopy.

Buttercup got his wonky leg surgically removed in February. Now that his stump is fully healed, a webbed plastic foot, a replica of his sister Minnie's foot, fits over Buttercup's "knee" and stays in place so he can walk around or swim just like any other two-footed duck, Ragsdale explained.

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