Calving Twins

About six hours old.

My lead and oldest cow, Locust Grove's Valentine, delivered twin heifer calves about 7:30 yesterday morning.  Valentine is 13 years old, the first Limousin born on our farm.  She was a show heifer (first in class at Ohio State Fair, 2001) and is generally easy to handle.  But she gets a little stubborn at calving time.  Like her mother before her, she likes to hide herself away from the herd when she is due to calve, so I always know she's ready when I can't find her!

The twin on the left is definitely bigger than the one on the right.

I spent two hours looking for her Thursday evening. I was just about at my wits end when I remembered that two years ago when she calved BTAP Thor, she had hopped the fence into the woods and delivered her calf under a large cedar tree. As I walked toward the woods I could see that the fence had been trampled down to about 30 inches high. Over I went and immediately I spotted her about 50 feet ahead of me.  She had a nice nest of leaves and was lying down contentedly near a big cedar tree chewing her cud.  She had not come to her milk and there was no sign of a calf coming any time soon, so I left her there, sure she would calve within 24 hours, but not just right then.

I spent a restless night worrying about her.She has had two sets of twins and she's getting old. I had to be at work at 7:30 am to open the Conference Center for a town hall meeting with our State Senator, Shannon Jones.  Our Chamber of Commerce director was in charge. She grew up on a large diary farm in Virginia, so she understood when I made my apologies and left them to get on with it with out me.  I made it back to Valentine by 8:00 am hoping all was well. As I climbed over the fence I could see a calf up and nursing. I could also see a black pile on the ground beside the cow, which I hoped was a big pile of manure.  It wasn't.

The nursing calf seemed very small and spindly legged but it was up and nursing.  The bigger calf was huddled in the leaves and obviously had not been up yet.  They were both still a little wet.  Immediately I started working on the bigger calf, rubbing it all over to help it's circulation and trying to lift it up to get it on its legs.  I estimate it weighs about 70 pounds.

Here's some video I shot and loaded on YouTube. http://youtu.be/lQKtFuWpr60.  And another bit of video on YouTube, http://youtu.be/I1wqhnBdjT0.

I took Valentine a bucket of sweet feed about 10:00 am and went back to work. About 5:30 I took her a few flakes of hay.  Valentine was lying down and the calves were huddled in the leaves around her. They were a bit shivery so I got every body up on their feet and made the calves walk around. The bigger one went to nurse right away. They were still wobbly on their legs but the little one was particularly lively.  I'll check on them again this morning at first light and hope they made it through the cold night.  Like all the other mothers this month, Valentine did not have a big full udder of milk at the time of her calving. I never worry about the dry cold weather as long as a calf can get plenty of warm mother's milk.