Lucky 7 Cattle Co have been breeding purebred Red and Black Angus cattle for 15 years, and started their annual calving season in January.
They got a bit of a shock on Sunday, Jan. 26, when one of their 12-year-old cows gave birth to healthy triplets, appropriately named Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
Stacey Simpson says, “Funny enough, on this cow, some family members had predicted she would have twins by her size and the way she was carrying.” She says she wasn’t convinced, and bet supper out at the local Chinese restaurant on it. Well, she says, nobody won that bet.
“The cow had the first calf unassisted and the calf was small so we made the decision to palpate her.
“When I reached in I felt another two feet and a head so we pulled calf number two.”
She says when they got the two newborns settled, she decided she’d better check for the heck of it to make sure that was it: “Lo and behold I reached in and there was another set of feet coming!”
Simpson says, “I’d joked with my parents about getting a nurse cow for the last few years and when the third calf came out alive I won that battle.
“We now have Dolly, our Jersey nurse cow and she’s loving her two new-found boys.”
The third calf remains with its mother, and all three bull calves are doing very well, with no abnormalities, weighing 54, 56, and 62 pounds at birth.
The mother cow has had 11 calves previously, in 10 seasons she had singles, and one set of twins. Simpson says, “We see the odd set of twins every now and again but they aren’t something we wish for.
“Twins can create calving problems and can be labour intensive if the calves have abnormalities (ie: knuckling of leg joints due to limited space in utero) or if the cow doesn’t have enough milk for both.
“In that case we would either bottle feed the calf just in case a spare is needed if a cow loses a calf, sell the calf to someone who needs one, or bring in a nurse cow to raise the extra calf.”
She says, “We did a little research and the odds of same-sex triplets surviving range from 1 in 700,000 to 1 in 2,000,000.”
It’s the first set of triplets they’ve ever had at the ranch. Their story was featured on Global News last Friday.
Leslie Cholowsky
Editor