Left to their own devices

[wbvs58]

I put my dry cows into a 600 acre scrub block that I own next door each from weaning up in early autumn up to a couple of weeks before calving. Well, I got caught out. One of my cows had twins right over the back boundary on Monday, nice even pair of heifers by SAV Rainmaster out of a Sydgen Black Pearl cow.


They seemed quite vigorous and were suckling well, may have been 48hrs old when I found them. As you can see they are in fairly thick scrub and after I took the photo she moved off with one lagging behind. I thought, oh no, I hope she can count to two. I have been driving around the block twice daily since then looking for her to no avail. It is about 2 km of scrub between there and the open paddocks. I found her yesterday with 8 cows that were still in there near the gate out but unfortunately only one calf. I did not force the issue but left the gate open into a 5 acre paddock. This morning I went down to the gate and they had come through but still only the one calf. I thought the chances of it turning up was virtually zero. This arvo I went to drive around with the remote hope the calf would be somewhere bellowing out for a feed. As I drove towards the gate I noticed the cow near a shed there with its calf running around and as I went around to go through the gate noticed a calf on the other side of here having a very determined suckle. It seems that she must have put the calf down somewhere and it has finally got up and started looking for her and she has heard it bellowing and headed into find it.

It is amazing how if left to their own devices they get things sorted. It has been a great achievement for her to bring both calves home through such thick scrub. Dogs are not that uncommon in there as well, neighbours down the road just lost sheep to dogs last week.

Ken

 

[wbvs58]

The calves are both heifers too.

Ken

 

[Stocker Steve]

Congrats. We have poor success with mothering up twins on pasture. Folks who like to calve on pasture do not usually talk about this. The strong survive... We have learned to snag one of the twins before it disappears.

The interesting thing is good "mothering" seems to hurt twin survival. "Easy" cows stand around till someone shows up to suck, rather than taking off and hiding a calf in a remote area.

The neighbor has a high input corral calving system. They pen the trio up tight and have very good success raising twins.

 

[Nesikep]

twins are nice when they work.. .some cows have a hard enough time counting to 1, let alone 2...
I had one very stupid cow have twins at 2am on a rainy, cold morning.. she wanted nothing to do with the 2nd one so I took it inside and fed it, next morning I showed it to a cow that lost her calf a day earlier and she took it at first sight...
This year I had twins from a good momma and she had both licked clean by the time I saw them and they had no trouble whatsoever.. I wish both of them would have been heifers, the one heifer is really nice (I adopted the male twin to another cow at 6 weeks, you could never tell they had to share milk at any point)

My friend was given a Jersey/angus calf as a bottle baby.. she had twins the last two years!..


My proud momma the next morning

 

[wbvs58]

The twins are going well. The cow is doing a great job with them. The bad news is I was wwwwwrong, one is a bull calf. Oh well, still a nice pair of calves just won't be keeping a heifer. Doesn't matter as I usually have too many nice heifers to chose from so it helps when one eliminates itself.
Superimpressed with how the cow has dealt with the situation.I think sometimes we just interfer too much.

Ken