We had 6 Black Angus calves born this week to 5 cows. One of the calves was left orphaned and we don't know who she belonged to. Is it normal for cows to forget one of their twin babies? It was running from one cow to the other and none of them would claim it. It's now a bottle calf.
Twins
- Thread starter kansan
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kansan":8oubfwf1 said:
It is pretty common for a cow to chose one of the twins, and reject the other. Another fairly common occurance is that the twins get seperated - either due to the mother moving to deliver the 2nd twin, or for another reason - the end result being that the mother focuses on the one that is with her, and the second one is rejected by default - for lack of a better term. It takes a helluva cow to accept, keep track of, and successfully raise twins.
Jim62
Well-known member
We had an angus cow do twins a month or so back. We thought she was accepting one and rejecting the other. As it turned out, she was just dealing with one at a time for the first few days. She would park one and deal with the other one, and then come back and switch after a while. Soon as they were able to get around pretty well, it was all just one happy little family.
Keren
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msscamp":3unv03b8 said:
:lol2: :clap: :banana:
Said it before, I'll say it again. I like twins but more importantly I love cows that can RAISE twins.
Jim62
Well-known member
I hadn't really thought about it that way. But, I went up and checked it out yestiddy, and you're absolutely right. There they were. Sucking. One on either side.
Fancy that........
Fancy that........
mnmtranching
Well-known member
I can't believe some don't like twins. I had 2 cows last year, raised $1200 worth of calves each. I sometimes have a weak twin, but never have a cow that won't except both. After all, both calves will have the same sent at birth.
bigbull338
Well-known member
as said some cows will choose 1 twin an leave the other 1.an some cows will take both twins with no prob.since you have a cow that lost a calf.you might get her to take the other twin.
mnmtranching":27vxr83m said:
You're lucky that you've never had a cow who wouldn't accept both twins - we've had a few who flat-out took a disliking to one of the twins. We've had quite a few cows who would accept both, but were not able to raise both. We've also had a few sets of twins who got seperated for one reason or another, and Mom rejected one because of that. We found one calf from the last set in the alleyway between pens - cold, wet, shivering, and hungry. Somehow he had managed to navigate a half-mile of pasture, went under an electric fence gate, came up a 1/4 mile driveway, and ended up in the alley - I don't know how or why, but he did it - all at roughly 36 hours old. Tried putting him back with Mom, but she wouldn't have anything to do with him. I bottled him, and we ended up grafting him onto a heifer who lost her calf due to coyote/dog attack.
