I was reading the post "is this possible" (http://cattletoday.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12508) a few days ago about cows having twin calves several weeks to several months apart.
Never heard of it before, but that's not that surprising.
Well, with that in mind, on Saturday a calf just "shows up"...comes in to the yard with the milking herd. Calf looks half-angus; solid black but obviously holstein structure. We're sure it's not a twin from the neighbor's angus herd that snuck through the fence (although its sire obviously did!).
Two cows are near this calf, one is dry, other is lactating. Calf is nursing off the lactating cow. Neither appears to have calved...no afterbirth, nothing on rump or tail...lactating cow shouldn't be more than 170 days bred, leaving 110 days to calving. Vet has been wrong before, but not by that much. Dry cow should be near 280 days bred, but she's not bagging up yet and we can bump a calf. All cows are running with a herd bull, so no AI dates to go by.
So we try process of elimination - start checking off the cows as they come through the barn. Figure maybe the dam to this calf is somewhere on pasture, maybe dead, and we can figure out which cow we're missing this way. All the cows come through the barn; we're not missing any.
We looked the dry cows over and most of the milking herd and have no clue which cow calved. Maybe it's one that we're milking already. Haven't had any cows calve recently (last day or so) where this might be a twin with another calf...unless we're encountering the situation mentioned in the other post. Maybe one of the fresh cows that calved a few weeks ago dumped another calf and just left it. We've had a few 2nd calvers not claim their calf, so that might be a possibility. Maybe it's more logical - maybe one of the lactating cows was further along than we thought - though we dry them all off at 220 days, so even if the vet was off by a month that shouldn't have happened.
Just rambling here...but wondering, just how common is this, a cow calving twice several weeks - or longer - apart? is it a one-in-a-million chance? we're kinda running out of ideas here; with a hundred head of milking and dry stock there's a lot of cows to choose from. If the cow's already being milked it isn't that big a deal, but if it was a dry cow that calved we need to start milking her.
Ideas?
Never heard of it before, but that's not that surprising.
Well, with that in mind, on Saturday a calf just "shows up"...comes in to the yard with the milking herd. Calf looks half-angus; solid black but obviously holstein structure. We're sure it's not a twin from the neighbor's angus herd that snuck through the fence (although its sire obviously did!).
Two cows are near this calf, one is dry, other is lactating. Calf is nursing off the lactating cow. Neither appears to have calved...no afterbirth, nothing on rump or tail...lactating cow shouldn't be more than 170 days bred, leaving 110 days to calving. Vet has been wrong before, but not by that much. Dry cow should be near 280 days bred, but she's not bagging up yet and we can bump a calf. All cows are running with a herd bull, so no AI dates to go by.
So we try process of elimination - start checking off the cows as they come through the barn. Figure maybe the dam to this calf is somewhere on pasture, maybe dead, and we can figure out which cow we're missing this way. All the cows come through the barn; we're not missing any.
We looked the dry cows over and most of the milking herd and have no clue which cow calved. Maybe it's one that we're milking already. Haven't had any cows calve recently (last day or so) where this might be a twin with another calf...unless we're encountering the situation mentioned in the other post. Maybe one of the fresh cows that calved a few weeks ago dumped another calf and just left it. We've had a few 2nd calvers not claim their calf, so that might be a possibility. Maybe it's more logical - maybe one of the lactating cows was further along than we thought - though we dry them all off at 220 days, so even if the vet was off by a month that shouldn't have happened.
Just rambling here...but wondering, just how common is this, a cow calving twice several weeks - or longer - apart? is it a one-in-a-million chance? we're kinda running out of ideas here; with a hundred head of milking and dry stock there's a lot of cows to choose from. If the cow's already being milked it isn't that big a deal, but if it was a dry cow that calved we need to start milking her.
Ideas?
