Twins

What a way to start our calving season, this is what I found Sunday Morning. A little history on this cow, she is a 9 y o Charolais, this is her third set of twins. In seven calving seasons, she has had 10 calves and raised every one of them! Her calving history is: single, single, twins, single, twins, single, twins. Wish I had some more like her.
I am interested in hearing from others members about their experience with cows having twins.

We have 130 purebred charolais cows and I check the last 5 years:
2013: 8 pairs all alive
2014: 3 pairs alive and 1 abortion (twins)
2015: 3 pairs alive
2016: 8 pairs alive and 1 pair born dead
2017: 5 pairs alive and we lost 1 on an heifer so 11 live calves for 6 cows.
Charolais have twins 4-5% of the time. We prefer 1 good calf but twins are always special. 2 years ago we had an embryo that split and it result in 2 identical bulls.
We are at 46 calves right now this year and we have 1 pair of twins alive and 1 cow aborted twins 40 days before her due date.

I don't want to rain on your parade, but I'd rather not have them. It isn't uncommon for the cow to reject one of them, and not many range cows have enough milk to raise two calves without extra feed.

When I get twins and the cow accepts both I usually pull one of them off at about 90 days old and sell it, and let her finish raising the other one. When she doesn't accept both I find a young person that I think would like to have the rejected one and give it to them to raise on a bottle.

I would honestly rather not have twins. We have lost several pair. And the last couple, the mother has rejected one and bottle babies can be a pain in the butt.

I don't mind twins, but on the cows out on grass they are often a bit smaller. Most cows will take both in my experience, but a few have not. If the cow looks to not be a milk wagon, we will often bring her and the twins to a pasture that we can supplement her with a little grain, or pull one and then I will bottle feed or put it on a nurse cow. We have an average of one set of twins a year, and seldom on the same cow.
Interesting that Chars have a tendency to have more twins. @Dubcharo has a great set up to have them and raise them.

I just had a set yesterday morning. Both heifers, 1 dead 1 live.
I rarely have a cow reject one or both. Have had a good success rate on live calves and cows have raised both. Last week a heifer had a hfr/steer set both alive and she is raising both.
If I have a cow that ends up having a dead calf, I will pull one off the heifer & "try" to splice onto new mom.
I HATE TWINS.
I have definitely made money on them, but they CAN be a major problem. They like to get tangled up coming out. It is harder on the dam. I do put the dam in with the 2 & 3 year olds, so they have less competition at the hay feeder & I can watch a little closer.
I have had two embryos spit with both being heifers.
I had one cow calved in March with set of twins, next year Feb with twins, next year Jan with set of twins. She came up open after our 45 day 100% AI this past spring, so I slipped her into fall. She settled on 1st AI. She is 11 years old.

I was just thinking of posting about one of my cows that has twins. 4 calving seasons and 3 sets of twins.
2015 twins bull & heifer:The first set weaned only slightly lighter than average but still good calves.
2016 single bull : but he was a whopper.
2017 twins 2 heifers: One of these was a runt and slow grower, but other has turned out to look good. I still have these and thinking of keeping the best one as replacement. 2018 twins bull & heifer: Nursing both although one is a little smaller, both are aggressive and fight for a tit. I have had other cows that reject twins but this one always takes to both. Another thing, in 2015 she calved in April and has been calving in 11 months consistently. The picture is last week. She has the possibility ,if she breeds back quick again, to have 4 calves in one year.

We have had 7 sets of twins this season and are roughly half way thru our calving season. We have never had this many in one year.

We have lost two sets (both dead prior to calving), have had 3 sets that birthed only one live calf, and have had 2 that had both live calves.

We are not fans of twins.

Congrats on your twins - and especially their good mama. I've only had one set, both heifers, mama left one to die after 3 days and she became my bottle calf; naturally (against my better judgment) I kept her. She's now bred with her 4th calf, not due until 3/14 and already big as a barn so she either has a whopper of a bull calf or twins. Hoping for the whopper - also not a fan of twins.

Never saw a cow let a twin, they calved in a pen and we let them together 4-5 days. Rarely we bottle feed twins after thhey are free in the barn they can find milk on other cows. Remember one cow with 3 tits at 16 years old with a second pair un a row, we bottle fed the calves but after 2-3 weeks they stop by themselves coming at us for milk.

To the best of my recollection, we have had 5 sets of twins. The first calf crop we had 2 sets, and then it went a few years before any more. This year after several years of not having any, we had a second calf BWF to have 2 heifer calves.

Honestly, I like twins. Sure, they can be a problem calving, but more often than not, ours seem to be born without problems. And, I find the extra income that we get from them, offsets the problems associated with them. We very rarely let the cow raise both calves. Most cows don't have the milk for 2 calves anyways. And we find a good use for the extra calves, either we adopt them onto a cow that lost her calf, or we sell them.

We always hope to get at least a few sets of twins each year. We pen them up in a fairly small corral for at least a week, just so we can make sure both calves are getting enough to eat and learning to follow mom. Some cows can count to 2, others are quite content to only focus on 1 calf. We like being able to steal a twin if we have a cow lose a calf. If we are lucky enough not to need an extra calf usually we will let the cow raise both unless her or the calves are noticeably struggling.

Last year we had 5 sets, all born unassisted and alive. 3 of the sets were kept together on the dams, 1 set we stole a calf and grafted onto another cow, and the other set one of the calves died at about a week old (not really sure why, he always seemed a bit weaker right from the get go). Of the 3 sets left on the dams, the first had a combined weight of 1160 lbs at 195 days of age, the 2nd set combined weighed 1005 lbs at 192 days & the 3rd set wasn't weighed but they were June twins and probably weighed roughly 350 lbs each at the start of November.

Creekdrive - I do about the same, but I sure don't HOPE to get any. I have made some good money on twin heifers, but if I never have another set, I really would not get upset!!!!
And with my luck, IF I have a cow lose a calf it's prior to any twins and she's already dried off.

I had my 1st of twins Jan 3 of this year. 1st babies born for this calving season. One bull and one heifer. The little bull was solid dark chocolate brown and perfect herford heifer (thats a mouthfull). Mom is a multi-cross and dad is a good herford bull. Both are doing well and full of energy, pouncing around. No assist birthing and mom is tending to both handily. I have heard that since they are paternal twins the heifer may be sterile. Is this an old wives tale or not? I have read it both ways and would really like to know.

The vet in my area does not do house calls, so you have to haul them in, which I have had to do several times. I wish there was another way, other than waiting for two years. That is a real hardship on me as well as my "girls" when they are in distress, but that's the way it goes. With that in mind, I guess I may have to haul her in to see if she has what it takes to be a mother, otherwise off she goes.

Any how, they are growing just as fast as their cousins, 17 so far in 25 days. For one bull, I find that he is very good at servicing his herd. I usually have 28 calves for 28 cows, but this year I may have a bonus. Only time will tell

There's about a 90% chance that the heifer of a heifer/bull set of twins, will be a freemartin. Sorry, but that's the odds. 10% chance that she might breed.

Yes, a heifer twin to a bull is generally a "freemartin", meaning a non-breeding female. Usually, you will be able to tell by weaning time. Sometimes, she will have a lot of hair growth in the vulva. The vulva may be larger, she may pee a little different. Not all the time, but most, she will be a little abnormal looking.

Almost diffidently a freemartin. We had one and being our first set of surviving twins that were male and female. We took a blood sample and sent it to Genesource in Wisconsin. For a fee they tested it. Sure enough she was. It is like a 93% chance it is. We will save our money in the future and through em in the feed lot.

In a perfect world I would never want twins. I don't mind the odd one when it works out to adopt to a good cow that lost her calf.
It's very seldom in my experience that a cow will come back off the range in the fall with both calves in tow. Seems like one will invariably get separated and end up orphaned when turned out into thousands of acres of trees and hills. Lots of cows will raise them if they are on smaller pastures but I'm not a big fan of cows raising twins anyway. I feel it takes too much out of the cow and I'll pay the price for that down the line.
I'm happiest with one good calf.
In a good year we'll get about 8 sets, bad year 16 or so. Fingers crossed for less this year.

Out of my little herd, we have had 5 sets of twins - two today. 1 was sold, we didn't calve her out.

This morning a cow had a calf about 6am. I went out to the barn shortly after she had calved. She was licking a tiny calf. Yup, there was a hoof showing - turned up. Nephew Phil went in - coming backwards. Pulled a 100# dead bull calf. Didn't weigh the live calf yet. He had a slow start - gave shots but no eartag or weight. Get in the house & sterilized chains & handles. Got a call from a neighbor, had a calf they couldn't get out. Went over & pulled a dead calf after getting the head pulled up.
Noon put another cow in barn because she was isolating herself from herd. 5pm nothing. Went in her, tiny feet & head still over "the shelf" - not dilated. Left her alone. Went to play pool.
Got home 9pm - no calf. Went in - all tangled up. Had 2 front feet, but when he looked for head, found a spine going sideways. Twins tangled up. Pushed them both back in, finally figured out what went with what. Got both out ALIVE!!!! Bull & Heifer.
My "city boy" nephew is really getting great at calving assists. This is 21 calves on the ground, and today was the first cow we had to touch. Tired, heading to bed.