Mothering up ‘twins’ on Mother’s Day
Surprise arrival of a little – and a larger – calf
BY KIM LANGEN
The birth of a pair of nice heifer calves was not too strange – except that they were dozens of pounds apart in weight, and they arrived on Mother’s Day.
It was early in the morning of Sunday, May 9, when hired man Brian Moffat went out to the barn at the Moffat farm on Hwy. 3 to find a very small but viable newborn calf lying in the straw.
“A cow had calved in the big loose-housing,” said Moffat. “But the calf was premature. It weighed 14 pounds, and it didn’t have any teeth. We put the mother and the calf in a maternity pen.”
And about 10 hours later, he returned to find a second calf inside the maternity pen. And it was a honker.
“There was another calf, and this one weighed 84 pounds,” said Moffat. “I couldn’t figure it out. I thought that something might have been changed around. But it was her calf.”
The black Angus cow had been running in the herd along with four bulls, and the family thinks maybe the two calves came from two separate reproductive cycles.
A local cattle inseminator said that a growing calf will gain about two pounds per day during gestation. Multiplying that by 21 days (one cycle) would predict a gain of 42 pounds. Add that to the small newborn’s weight of 14 pounds, and she would have weighed in at around 56 pounds in a months’ time.
So it looks like the little calf was conceived a month after her big sister, and got pushed out a month early.
“I’ve never heard of it before, but it looks like she conceived twice,” said Brian Moffat. “They don’t look like twins. The little one is kind of brown, and the larger one is black.”
Stan and Lois Moffat, whose son Wendell runs the farm, said it was pretty unusual for sure. They’ve seen hundreds of calves born in their lifetime, and this was definitely a rarity.
“I’ve never seen that before in my life,” said Stan. “The tiny one needed a bottle, otherwise the little joker would be left behind. He wouldn’t be able to keep up.”
Brian Moffat said he has been bottle-feeding the tiny heifer since she was born, and things were going good.
“I’m giving her two bottle feeds a day, and she’s drinking really well,” he said last week. “I fill a four-pint bottle two-thirds full, and she takes it all.”
Moffat weighed both calves just after birth, and later took a photo of the premature one next to his six-month-old son Kieran, just for comparison. He also sent a photo with his hand by the calf’s head.
“I’ve been around cows my whole life,” said Moffat. “It was certainly something to see.”
A MOTHER’S DAY MIRACLE – Hired man Brian Moffat (below) was surprised to find this very small, but healthy 14-pound newborn calf in the loose housing at the Moffat farm on Mother’s Day. And he was even more surprised when a second calf appeared in the mat pen around 10 hours later – weighing 84 pounds. Looks like the cow was bred on two different cycles, a bit of a Mother’s Day miracle.
DARK-HAIRED YOUNGSTERS – Six-month-old Kieran Moffat gets to visit in the straw with a tiny new calf born on the Moffat farm on Mother’s Day. The calf weighed just 14 pounds, and later in the day the mother cow birthed a second calf –weighing 84 pounds. Below: Kieran’s dad, Brian Moffat, holding his hand next to the newborn calf’s little head.
