In the last five years, I’ve had four sets of twin calves born in my small herd of Brangus cattle, two sets in 2009. All have been fraternal (I understand only 10% of twin calves born are identical), a bull calf and a heifer calf.
Although the twin calves certainly help my calving percentage, they sometimes present more problems than that advantage is worth. The first problem – knowing the cow has twins. In my experience, the cow is likely to accept one of the calves and reject the other. She will usually keep one calf with her and abandon the other. Case in point: The first set of twins born to one of my cows – I could hear a baby calf bawling frantically in a pasture across the creek from my house. When I went over to the pasture, I discovered a newborn (she had apparently nursed her mamma once) frantically searching for “mamma” and milk. She was running from one cow to the next and getting some good kicks in the process.
As I searched the pasture, I found the mother cow, with another new calf (bull), a distance away, and after checking the rest of the cows, decided that cow was the mother of both calves. Picking up the heifer calf and taking her to the mother, the baby calf was very happy to find “Momma,” but Momma wasn’t happy with her, kicking her off as she tried to nurse.
Long story short, the cow and two calves were moved to a pen and kept there several days, trying to get the mother to accept the little heifer calf. Meanwhile, I was having to bottle feed the heifer some to keep it alive. And, after four or five days and trying a number of different ways to get the mother to accept the calf, I gave up and ended up bottle-feeding the calf.
Two of the four sets of twins (all different mother cows) have ended up with one of the set being bottle fed to weaning time. I have been successful in getting two out of the four mothers to accept both calves. But, the two calves nursing their mother take a toll on the mother’s body condition and they don’t gain as well as single calves.
The other disadvantage is that the mother cow doesn’t breed back as rapidly as normal, so it makes the next calf later than normal.
But, the last set of twin calves sold weighed a total of 1017 pounds and brought over $950. So, to look at the cow’s production and income brought in, that makes her look pretty good!
At the moment, I’m ambivalent on twins. I like the production and income, but it sure increases the work! What’s your experience with twins?
Subscribe by Email
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I have had twin calfs also and it is just as you have said . The mother excepted one calf and let the other one for me to take care of. It is a lot of work esp. if when you have more then one bottle fed calf. They sure are cute though and the grandkids have a great experience feeding them.
One of the ways we have had the best luck getting mom cow to accept the second calf is to take the first one away while she decides to accept the first. The cow will usually learn to count to two much quicker this way. Of course this means you have to have a place to get the cow and calves up ,and it also means more time spent with the cow. We sometimes have 2-3 sets of twins a year and have to prepare for this event. We normally keep the sets that are heifers, ( I always name them and they become pets) but they usually don’t continue on to have twins themselves.
When we have had twins we place both with the cow in a small pen and turn a good CONTROLLABLE cow dog on the calf that was rejected. One or so bawls from the calf and the cow, seeing a dog trying to eat her formally rejected calf, makes her the best mother to both calves immediately. We have never had it fail
We had a set of twins on the 26th. of march and bottle fed both one time and then the smaller one we bottle fed a couple more times. We finally put a set of hobbles on the cow so she could not kick the small one off any more. It change the cow attitude and she is now taking both.
80 angus cross cows and five sets of twins this year. Have only five first calf heifers and 3 had twins. Never anything like this in the past. Maybe a set every couple of years. I had them on a high protein supplement a month before breeding season. I wonder if that makes a difference?
Hi,
Thanks for your comment on the “Twins” article on CattleManagement.com
I have been unable to find anything which says a high protein supplement contributes to a high twinning rate. The only thing found in the research was that there is increased twinning in cows bred between August and October.
Nathan
Our Angus cow (bred with our Galloway bull) gave birth to twin heifer calves Monday. She cares for them both extremely well. Our angus/holstein heifer gave birth to one heifer calf on Wednesday. We put the two cows together, and Thursday, the twins also were nursing on the angus/holstein cow. They mostly nurse on their natural mother, but will also nurse off the other cow when given the opportunity. All the calves look very good, and are already filling out. I don’t know if this is common, but this seems to work very well for all. I don’t have to worry about the twins not getting enough milk from just one cow, and I think the angus/holstein cow has plenty to share.
Jeannie,
Thanks for your information concerning your twin heifer calves and the two cows sharing the nursing duties. I had an interesting experience with my last set of twins (a bull and heifer calf-Brangus) recently. They were up to about 500 lbs and still nursing their mother. The mother initially had a hard time accepting the heifer calf, but I finally was able to get her to accept the heifer baby within a week of the time they were born. I noticed a couple of weeks ago one of my first-calf heifers with about a month old calf and she had a big calf and a small calf nursing her. Took a closer look, and the big calf nursing was the twin heifer. The first-calf heifer had apparently accepted her and was letting her nurse alongside the new baby! Needless to say, I sold the twin calves the next week to keep the heifer from stealing the new baby’s milk!
Just a quick question. We purchased a 6-7 yrs old Holstein back in the fall and she recently (in the last week) birthed a bull calf. We saw something on the internet that warned us the cow would give too much milk to the calf and it might die. So then we purchased a jersey bull calf @ the local sale barn and made sure it had colostrum. We are atempting to put the jersey on the holstein cow and wanted to know of any tricks to doing this as the holstein cow has about an 18″ – 24″ milk bag in diameter and is having trouble walking. I am not a born to be farmer and have never milked a cow, but it seems like she needs some relief. Any help in the matter would be GREATLY appreciated!
Hi Tammy,
Sounds like you’ve got a real milk cow there! If she’s accepted the jersey calf, along with her own, they should begin to drain that milk from the cow and reduce the size of her bag and teats.
If the teats are so big the calves can’t nurse them, then you might attempt to milk the cow a little. If you’ve had no experience at milking, that might be a difficult task, especially if she’s not a trained milk cow. In my long-time beef cattle experience, I’ve only had to milk a couple of cows right after the birth of their calves. I’ve put them into the chute, secured them in the head gate, let down the right side of the bottom of the chute to give access to the teats (growing up, we milked cows and you always milked from the right side).
Carefully reach in to one of the front teats (watch for a kick) and first, just touch and stroke a little to get her used to your touching her. When she calms down enough, you may want to put some warm water on the teats, then begin trying to squeeze the milk out. If the teat hasn’t been sucked, it might take a little while to get milk to come out.
Hope this helps you out.
Something we’ve noticed with our cows when they have twins is that in the beginning they’ll take one and leave the other. It appears as if one calf is abandoned but instead they have a “day shift calf” and a “night shift calf”. The “night shift calf” appears to be abandoned because you never see it with the mother in daylight hours and it lies in the same place all day. We’ve taken these calfs to mom thinking they were rejected and the moms will often totally ignore them when she has the other calf. We’ve bottle fed some of these apparently rejected calfs in the past and now I wonder if we should have waited a little longer and just kept an eye on the seemingly abandoned calf. Now that we have more twinning experience we watch for the changing of the shifts and check the calfs belly to make sure they’re fed.
Jan,
Thanks for your comments on Twin calves. Your observation is very good. I don’t know that I have ever noticed that about cows with twins. I’ll be more observant from here on out to see if they have the “day calf” and “night calf.”
We have a 3 week old calf twin that was rejected by mom. She is eating very well but has a fever and a limp. We gave antibiotic and b-complex shots to no avail. Cannot get fever down until yesterday we gave her tylenol with her feeding. She also is limping on hind leg and walks on the leg like she is tip-toeing. Does anyone have some words of wisdom or information to share?
Hi Dawn,
Sounds like you have run into one of the problems with twin calves – one always seems to have some sort of problem or multiple problems. I have never had much luck in treating baby calves and getting them over their problems, especially a “bad” leg. In my experience, you just have to try to let them get over it on their own. It may take awhile, but, if the calf is taking food and continuing to get stronger, eventually, the limp may go away and hopefully she will get over whatever is causing the fever.
I once had one of the twins which was blind at birth. I bottle fed her and for about 60 days her blindness continued, but one day I saw her avoid one of my dogs and figured out she now had some sight. As she got older, it seemed her blindness had completely gone away.
So, my theory is, sometimes it’s best to let babies (calves) heal on their own.
Can a first calf holstein cow manage on her own with her calf? Will she produce too much milk and need to also be milked by hand? Will she produce adequate milk supply for her calf? Will she produce little milk and the calf will need to be given supplemental milk?