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MikeC

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This old girl has had two sets of twins. These are both heifers, the other set included a freemartin and a bull.

Will these two heifers be more likely to have twins?

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Love to watch these two nurse. It's like a race to see which one can get the most milk.

twins.jpg
 
Golly Mike - way you keep bragging aboutyour black cattle I figured you might show us one! :D

Nice animals and nicer yard.

You obviously have far too much time on your hands.

Bez>
 
Bez>":1jl4iprs said:
Golly Mike - way you keep bragging aboutyour black cattle I figured you might show us one! :D

Nice animals and nicer yard.

You obviously have far too much time on your hands.

Bez>

These are "Black" cattle. I messed up and posted the negatives. :lol:

Don't tell my wife about the time thing. ;-)

Back to subject. Will twin daughters be more likely to twin than their mother?
 
MikeC":1rr8bjwh said:
Bez>":1rr8bjwh said:
Golly Mike - way you keep bragging aboutyour black cattle I figured you might show us one! :D

Nice animals and nicer yard.

You obviously have far too much time on your hands.

Bez>

These are "Black" cattle. I messed up and posted the negatives. :lol:

Don't tell my wife about the time thing. ;-)

Back to subject. Will twin daughters be more likely to twin than their mother?

I honestly think it is a crap shoot - but you have an animal that has twinned before - maybe you need to try a breeding program on for size.

Perhaps a little line breeding? How about the ancestory of that girl in your front yard - got any more exactly like her?

Any twins that have come my way appear to be pretty darned random.

Bez>
 
MikeC":2jnpzs6i said:
This old girl has had two sets of twins. These are both heifers, the other set included a freemartin and a bull.

Will these two heifers be more likely to have twins?

I don't know. We have a cow that was a twin. She is on her third calf this year. So far she hasn't had twins. Her Mama had another set this year though. 9 calves in 7 years out of her. First twin heifers and then this year twin bulls.
 
The Meat Animal Research Center has done quite a bit of reseach on twinning. They even had some in their annual reduction sale last Jan. My understanding is maybe. The bull determinds if the daughter will have a high probabilty of twinning but I don't know the probabilty of a twin having twins. If you have another cow with the same sire as the twinner you can expect her to twin. They had a couple of twinning bulls that have an expected daughter twinning of 70%. I think the web address is http://www.ars.usda.gov. We went through a spell a couple of years ago with twins - 5 in one year - but got rid of all of them they are cute but often more trouble than they are worth.
 
My old mentor that had been raising cattle for close on to 70 years never kept a cow that twinned or a twin. He was dealing with dairy but felt that a cow that tewinned never milked up to her previous potential in sybsequent years after twinning and that twins had a higher likelyhood of twinning. He based that on his experience. By the time I knew him he very rarely had twins but all of those twins went back to just a couple of bulls and their daughters.

dun
 
Hey Mike, That's a great looking set of calves. Is this kind of a prominent trait in Charolais? Just curious, because the gentleman that I've bought several reg. heifers and a couple of bulls from has multiple sets of twins every year.
Trey
 
Twinning is "mostly" the outcome of high fertility - pretty much on both the cow & the bull. The cow, because she produces more eggs, the bull because he has high sperm count. Of course there's the identical twin, which is a function of the cow (I think).
I think cows that have identical twins might be more likely to pass this "trait" to her offspring. But twinning is lowly heritable. Think it was ABS that purposely developed bulls for twinning - breeding twin bulls to twin cows. There were able to increase the twinning incidence.
Nutrition has a lot to do with it also. A cow that is thin at BREEDING would rarely produce extra eggs. There are always exceptions. But fertility is highly affected by nutrition.
"Supposedly" Simmentals twin 13% & other beef breeds are at 8% - but those are OLD figures I was told many moons ago :D
 
TREY-L":2sldnnm8 said:
Hey Mike, That's a great looking set of calves. Is this kind of a prominent trait in Charolais? Just curious, because the gentleman that I've bought several reg. heifers and a couple of bulls from has multiple sets of twins every year.
Trey

Trey, I would guess no more than any other breed.

Dun, Twinning in dairy animals would be less desirable because of the incidence of freemartins and heifer retainage?
 
Fraternal twins (cows ovulating more than on egg at a time) is heritable. Identical twins is a random occurance. I think MARC had some lines that threw 30-40% twins. If you bought a bull out of these twinner lines he would not produce any more twins than any other bull would, but his daughters would.
 
MikeC":19wpxtlg said:
Dun, Twinning in dairy animals would be less desirable because of the incidence of freemartins and heifer retainage?

It's the loss of subsequent milk production that bothered Pete. The problem with dustocia was a secondary reason. I just wonder if the loss of milk prodcution in a beef cow would also rear it's ugly head with subsequent calves.

dun
 
We purchase a cow at a herd dispersal done at the sale barn a few years ago....they kept disclosing that this cow had twins, this one was a twin, the the cow we bought they didn't say anything. They were selling other animals that day too, not just the dispersal. This cow had twins the first year, a single the next (5/28/06) and had twins again on 3/27/07--she bred back before all the other cows that had calved before her????
Ofcourse things have not went well.

My understanding of twins (I am an identical twin), my mother had two sets of twins (one idential on fraternal).... eggs split who knows why, or what influences it. fraternal twins are cause by two fertilized eggs... female or male, cows placentas or blood sharing is different than in people... so go figure.. who knows, it guess thats why some freemartins are fertile. Donna

Edited to say...nice looking twins:)
 
i thought twinning (at least in humans) is one of those heritable traits that skips a generation? it seems like most heritable traits do. i know for instance that i'm much more like my grandparents phenotypically.
 

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