Triplets.........sheesh!

[MoGal]

Week ago Sunday noticed an old charolais cow laying down and here was this soccer ball size hanging out.... we've never had prolapse but have seen several around here with it......... got the cow up, put her in the lot and called the vet. He said because it all went back in when she got up that it was the cervix........... prolapse can happen at any age.

About 4 days later poor thing had 3 (2 red and 1 white) heifers. When she was preg checked in Oct he said she was mid to late 2nd .... we both think she was a month early. I realize with 3 they wouldn't have room to get real big.

Talked to an old fella a couple of weeks ago when we got one of his twin calves to bottle feed (momma would only take one) and he said in all his years of raising cattle that was only his 6th set of twins............. now hubby and I've only been married since 10/06 and we had one set of twins last year, 1 set of twins this year, 1 set of triplets this year (doesn't sound too good for our starting out does it????)

This really skews the calf loss for this year: 4 cows had 7 calves. Hopefully we'll never have triplets again........ how common is that?

 

[bigbull338]

i know that you dont like seeing twins or triplelets.but i for 1 always loved seeing twins esp heifers.because if i had a set of heifers.id always raise them.you are blessed to have the triplelet heifers.i hope your planning on raising them an keeping them if they make it to weaning.

 

[MoGal]

I wish they would have made it as the holstein cow calved over the weekend and she's got lots of milk (that's where my twin bottle calf, Scooter, went to so I only had to bottle him for 2 weeks). We've got 10 living calves born in December about 15 coming in February (3 came last weekend) and the other half in april/may............. so with the way our luck is going we probably will have another set of twins. These triplets were all about the same size as the twins who came 2 months early ..... I don't know that we could have saved them even if we had been right on top of them.

 

[Keren]

Just as an interesting aside, I know of 4 cases of triplets in my area in the last ten or so years, and 3 cases were from a Charolais cow, and the fourth from a Limo. Wonder if Charrys are more prone to multiples?

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

I know of only 1 set of triplets around here & it also was a Charolais cow - raised all 3, of course with suppliment, but the owner showed her as cow/calf.