Twin decisions

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Dana Kopp

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Twins, everyone's favorite topic...
Had a set on Thursday am, both are on the cow right now, birth weights 65 & 75 lbs, cow is 10yrs old. Just "surveying" to see what most people do with their twins. Bottle feed one in case you lose another? Sell one right away? Let them just stay on the cow? Nurse cows?

We have had a couple sets of twins in the past, one set we left on the cow - so we had two ok calves. The other set, one got killed a couple days after birth so the cow just raised one and of course she was a great calf. We have debated on which calf to keep on the cow and which to turn into a bottle baby - both could be great replacement heifers...
 
personally id leave both twins on their momma.esp if she is letting them both suck.an she is taking care of both of them.the only way id bottle 1 is if she cant feed 2 calves.you might want to feed her some extra.so the calves dont pull her down to bad.
 
Where I work, when the twins are a bull & heifer combo, they pull the heifer and keep the bull-calf on the cow. When they are same-sex twins, they pull the smaller of the two and keep the larger one on the cow. The calves that are pulled off the cows are bottle fed, or grafted onto another cow if/when possible.

Here at home, twins have not been an issue......knock wood.

Katherine
 
Workinonit Farm":vh7b8qds said:
Where I work, when the twins are a bull & heifer combo, they pull the heifer and keep the bull-calf on the cow. When they are same-sex twins, they pull the smaller of the two and keep the larger one on the cow. The calves that are pulled off the cows are bottle fed, or grafted onto another cow if/when possible.

Here at home, twins have not been an issue......knock wood.

Katherine


I have never had any luck getting a cow to accept both.
 
I have a set of twin bulls two months ago. We left them to suck on the cow, and the cow lets them and mothers them. Things look okay to us. That was before I joined this forum. We were ignorant then.
 
Don't have many twins but I like it when I do. There's money in twins if they both survive birth.

It's like a bonus. Buy one get one free, kinda deal.
 
pauline":1s88q4if said:
I have a set of twin bulls two months ago. We left them to suck on the cow, and the cow lets them and mothers them. Things look okay to us. That was before I joined this forum. We were ignorant then.

:lol2: You must be kin to my Aunt Pauline. Got the same sence of humor. :lol2:
 
When we have twins, it depends on the cow what we do. If she has accepted them both, and seems to have enough milk we will leave them both on her, and pull one off if/when we need to. Either when they look like they are suffering for milk, or if we have another cow that loses a calf.

If she doesn't accept them both, or looks short on the milk department we pull one off, either the smaller or the heifer if it is a bull/heifer combo. Then depending on how early in calving season it is we may bottle feed or possibly sell.

We get about 3 sets a year. And so far we haven't had a cow that didn't take both calves. But, we have never left both calves on the cow past the end of calving season. Most of our cows would be hard pressed to raise 2 decent calves. Lots of milk for one, but not quite enough for 2. And usually, we end up needing any extras by the time we are done calving. Last year I fed one calf all summer though because we had one too many, and sold another one.
 
We pen the cow/calves and leave them both on her for about a week. During that week I start the smaller of the calves on a bottle with a little each day. After a week or so we turn out the cow and big calf, keep the runt around on a bottle for awhile to see if we need a grafter, then sell it if we don't.
 
i had twins last year left them on the cow but she was milking good she raised them both to over 400lbs in 7 months i dont think i went wrong by leaving them on her.
 

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