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?
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?
Hello Good Folks –
I am writing a novel about a mama cow (Mama Red) with twins. And like you all are saying, she abandons one (heifer) and accepts the male. Question: Do any of you know what the selection is all about? Is it based on gender or the size or something else? Any help would be greatly appreciated!! I want to understand this as much as I can. I grew up on a beef cattle farm in SC. Thanks! Bren
If only cows could talk! I don’t know that anyone has ever figured out the selection process by the mama cow when she has twins. And, as you say, it’s usually the heifer that gets abandoned. I thought, with each set of twins, I knew why, but have decided there really is no pattern.
So, to tell the truth, I certainly don’t know and I doubt if anyone could determine the reason for the selection/rejection. As I said at the beginning -if only cows could talk, we could probably find out!
My experience with twins. If you keep mother cow pinned in nursery for birthing both calves she will likely accept both calves. However if she’s free to roam, she will likely lick on the first calf, then when she starts to deliver the second one she’ll move, forget about the first one and hardly ever accept it.
I have a 8 yr old cow that just had her 6th baby on x-mas eve. She is the most protective mother to 1 thru 5 but now she doesn’t want number 6!!! Does any one have any idea what the problem could be????
Karen,
It sounds as if you have a similar problem to what I had this fall. I had a cow have her third calf and the first few days everything was fine. Then, one day she “parked” the calf near the pens and went out to graze. I decided that would be an opportune time to put the ID tag in the calf’s ear.
I went out, caught the calf, brought it into the pen and tagged it. When I tried to take it back where he was, he took off and finally settled in a different spot. The cow came back, looking for the calf. When she didn’t find it in the spot where she left it, she began “bawling” frantically, the calf jumped up and ran to her, she smelled it, decided it wasn’t her calf and wouldn’t let it suckle.
I then put the cow and calf into a small pen, thinking I would force her to understand that was her calf. She continued to kick him off. I resorted to giving him a bottle feeding a couple of days. After giving the calf a little milk from the bottle, he would frantically and persistently try to suckle his mother, but she continued to kick him off.
Next, I decided to try something a friend who had been in the dairy business told me they would use to get a cow to accept a calf that wasn’t her own. I put the cow in the chute and rubbed Vicks on her nose. I smeared Vicks all over the calf. Turned the cow out, gave the calf a little milk from the bottle, he ran to momma when he finished and began to persistently try to suckle. She turned, smelled the calf, settled down and allowed the calf to nurse. She and the calf bonded and it is now growing as it should with momma taking good care of him.
We hate twin calves. Mostly if it is a bull and a heifer calf, because the heifer will then be a Queen and not fertile.
Ah twins…got to love them! We pen the mom and twins until we know for sure she loves them both making sure each is getting fed. Sometimes we have to put mom in a squeeze and let one suck on each side so she gets use to seeing one on each side at once. Not sure but kind of like a horse that you have to train on each side of brain. The calves seem to pick their side and always go back to it. Another trick that works wonders to bond any calf to a cow, is to put them in a stall, sprinkle water then grain on calf, then turn out the lights for the night. By daylight, the cow will have licked calf clean and think I love this calf:) We have used this trick many times to put a twin on a cow that lost a calf so that each twin has 1 mom.
This has been most helpful. We have just had our first set of twins, both males. We think the momma took to the first but not the second born. Yesterday we fed him a bottle of colostrum and had him in the back yard. He seemed fine and healthy. Last night he wouldn’t take another bottle and this morning he won’t eat again. He is no longer getting up and walking around like he did yesterday. I have him in the house with me now because it is raining and getting cold outside. Any ideas about why he seems to be going downhill?
Thanks,
Susan
I love Lynne’s trick: “…Another trick that works wonders to bond any calf to a cow, is to put them in a stall, sprinkle water then grain on calf, then turn out the lights for the night. By daylight, the cow will have licked calf clean and think I love this calf
”
I have heard about the Vicks trick: “I put the cow in the chute and rubbed Vicks on her nose. I smeared Vicks all over the calf. Turned the cow out, gave the calf a little milk from the bottle, he ran to momma when he finished and began to persistently try to suckle. She turned, smelled the calf, settled down and allowed the calf to nurse. She and the calf bonded and it is now growing, as it should with momma taking good care of him.”
My story: We had a cow on a high protein supplement two months ahead of breeding. The Brangus Cow had been letting others (cows and calves) suck on her along with her calf. We had to separate the cow and the calf from the herd. We added the supplement to help the cow maintain and gain some weight. (Note: We have an Angus Bull, his off spring are small calves). Eventually a neighbor bought the calf.
When we released the cow back into the herd, she bred quickly and produced heifer twins Christmas Eve 2010. We watched the cow her leave one heifer on one side of a fence, go to the other side and nurse, then rotate back to the other for two days. When both calves joined mama, we separated all three from the herd to give mama supplements and free will high-grade hay all day. The cow has readily accepted both heifer-calf twins. All are doing well.
I have an interesting question….We had a cow die a few weeks back after calving and were bottle feeding her calf(heifer) until one of our heifers calved. The heifer has accepted this calf along with her calf (also a little heifer). There is a week age difference between the calves and they both seem to be doing good. Does this cow have enough milk for both of these little girls?? She’s angus and a big cow and her bag seems big. I’m just not sure if we should pull the orphan off of her or let them be a little family. Any ideas?
Hi Mary,
If the cow has accepted both calves and they seem to be healthy, I wouldn’t worry about pulling one off and putting on another cow. I’ve had several mother cows raise two calves and even though they may not gain quite as fast as a single calf, they have all been healthy and learned to forage for themselves pretty quickly.
Nathan
We have found a no fail way of getting momma to accept her calf or to put an orphaned calf with a non biological mom.. Milk the mother cow by hand and rub her own milk on whatever calf you want her to accept.. Never fails, or at least not for us..
We have also recently had a set of twins and momma loves them both but I fear she just doesn’t have enough milk to sustain both of them.. We have been supplimenting both calves in hopes to give momma a little bit of rest.
i have a question. We had a cow that gave birth to twin heifers. She raised both of them and was a wonderful mother. They are now almost 18 months old. Does anyone know if it is true that twins don’t reproduce?
Would love your thoughts on this.
Twin heifers will reproduce. A heifer of twins that are one of each is called a Free Martin and will not reproduce. Hope this helps:)
Thank you Lynne!!!
I love my twins and want to keep them but only if they reproduce.
Hi Dianne
If both are heifers, they will reproduce. If the twins are a bul & heifer, the heifer will not be fertile and will not reproduce
Thank you so much Rob,
That is exactly what I wanted to know. Yeah!! I get to keep the twins!!! Thanks!!
Dianne
My Christmas Eve heifer twins are now five months old. Great question from Dianne: so, 10% of TWINS ARE BOTH HEIFERS and those WILL REPRODUCE; 90% of twins (Free Martin) that are a heifer and a bull calf explain why so many ranchers will say twins will not reproduce. I am also keeping my twin heifers. Dianne, please post when your twin heifers are bred and when they give birth – I wonder if “they’ll” have twins also? I enjoy this site and information shared, Thanks to all of you.
Dianne/ Mary Ann
Also keep in mind that if both are males, the males will also be fertile,
Rob
At our farm we had a cow that had twins, we did not know until the next day,so it went that whole night and the next day until we seen it. Of course the mother rejected it, we bottle fed it, it was so weak, would not take a bottle well, then we tried to tube feed it, it was just to weak and did not make it.
I have been reading past experiences from people and now wondering if we did the right thing! The 1st year heifer had twin and has rejected the bull calf and took the baby heifer and now we have taken the bull calf home, got some colostrom and milk replace. It has been appoximately 20 hours since she gave birth. While he was still with his mother she would move around anytime he’d try to suck and then would sort of charge him with her head. Hope we did the right thing bring him back to the barn with us!
Rochelle,
You probably shortcut a lot of hassle by going ahead and bringing the bull calf to the barn and starting to bottle feed him. Sometimes, by putting the cow and calves in a confined area, you can get the cow to eventually accept the second calf, but it doesn’t always work.
I’ve tried nearly every “trick” known to get a cow to accept a calf – some worked, some didn’t. One trick a dairyman told me was to rub Vicks on the calf and then rub the Vicks on the cow’s nose. This worked for one cow who rejected her calf.
Another suggestion was to rub the afterbirth over the calf so the cow will “know” the calf is hers. This worked one time when I was grafting a calf to a cow who had lost her calf at birth.
I even had a neighbor who had a “twins halter” I used to try to get the cow to accept both calves. The halter latched the calves together and when the accepted one suckled, the other was right there with it. That didn’t work too well because she just kicked both of them off!
As I said in the original article – sometimes twins are a blessing and sometimes they’re not. In any case, they’re a lot of work!
Nathan
… if she’s free to roam, she will likely lick on the first calf, then when she starts to deliver the second one she’ll move, forget about the first one and hardly ever accept it.
This was exactly my experience this spring. Galloway twin bull calves were born early morning. First calf – the bigger stronger one – rejected throughout the day. Isolated them in the barnyard overnight and hoped the mother would accept both calves. She did not. Rejected calf was noticeably weaker in the morning. Got an initial colostrum feeding in him and thought we were in the clear. We were not. Subsequent feedings went poorly. Resorted to force feedings through that day and night. Next morning the calf seemed stronger and fed well. Rubbing the back of the upper palette very useful in stimulating nursing. Calf that I and my 30 year dairyman friend thought dead for sure the previous day made a specacular comeback. 2 weeks after calving and he’s doing great. Mother has never accepted him as her calf. Some of these tricks might have worked but not with her. She is extremely protective for the first couple of weeks after calving. She will charge you if you get too near. Yet her calves have the sweetest temperment of the whole herd. Glad we managed to save this one – so far. I’ll feel a lot better at a month about his continued survival.
i have a problam.we have an orphan calf and it is weaned and we have a cow with a calf that lets it suck but her bag is small (not a big anouf for both). want to get it a weaning ring with the spikes.But im scard that the cow will not let its real baby suck because of the other what do you think.
Well, if the orphan is nursing another cow, it’s not really weaned, I’d think. But, my suggestion would be to pen the orphan for a couple of weeks and feed it to really get it weaned. That way you can keep it away from the surrogate cow that’s letting it nurse. I agree with you that the mother cow might start “kicking off” her real calf if you put the weaning ring on the orphan.
Hi Everybody;
Im looking for a kind of cow whihc is giving twin or more calves in every born. Do you know any kind of cow like this? Maybe I can import my country…
Hello Fatih,
Twin calves are relatively rare in any beef breed, so I don’t know of any breed which is likely to produce multiple births regularly. You might want to read the article at http://animalscience.ag.utk.edu/beef/pdf/NaturallyOccurringMultipleBirthsInCattle-FDK-2004.pdf for more information on the incidence of twins in beef cattle.
I will do anything not to bottle feed! I have several sets of twins each year. Before I started here they were sold for $100 right away. When I asked why I was told that they would be abandoned or just not grow. So I now keep all of them, its free money right? I put them in a small pen . I put the stronger one (the one that eats freely ) on the outside while the other tries to eat. If the mother wont allow it I put her in the chute open the side and nurse the calf. Usually after about 3 -5 days the cow starts to let the calf nurse on its own. If that doesnt work, I try to use a cow that the calf was born dead. (if I have one) I put her in the chute. and nurse the calf. I put that cows pee, poop, after birth (if its still there) on the calf and it almost always works. Once the cow gets used to the smell of the baby. I usually have 4 or more sets of twins a year. So far it has worked out really well. 5 days uf nursing the calves on the cow beats bottle feeding any day. Especiall if you use milk replacer. Not worth it. I dont know everything but you can email me anytime.
John
JVB@RanchoAlantro.com
I was told that twin cows can’t have children.. Is this true?? please help
i am seeing that we were very fortunate with our twins. The mom accepted both and raised both with no problem. It did take a toll on her but she was an exception to the rule. We had twin heifers and they are still with us. We wanted to see if both would calf. The verdict is still out. They should have calves by March.
Dianne
Yes it is true that if they are male & female, the female will not be fertile, but the male will be fertile. But, if they are both females the will both be fertile, and if they are both males, both will be fertile.
Rob
Hi Everyone. this is just great reading about the twin calves, we have been very lucky with them, the mother has always taken the second calf so far ( shouldn’t talk to load ,will back fire one day, now after reading all the troubles out there) only thing we see is, yes the mother doesn’t seem to have enough milk, so on the last pair we had, gave both calves a bottle, then they would turn around and go right to the mother and suck, they are cute. Once they got out on green grass, the mother had enough milk for both. All depends on the cow, had another, we fed the one calf, yes hieter calf on the side till weaning. The comment on them not catching right away, haven’t had that, the twins mother were right on schudule……. Oh, here’s one more thing, had one cow have twins two years in a row, there the poor girl had to work hard and the the third year she was open, but she was old then too and think a bit wore out.
Will try some of the grafting tricks on the first time heifer’s that give us trouble.
Everyone’s tricks for getting cows to accept their twin calves are great! From experience, I know that some tricks work for certain cows and the ones that don’t work will work on other cows. It is important to remember that each circumstance is different than the last, and not to get frustrated too easily and try-try-again.
For those of you who find it works best by using grain or afterbirth from the other twin or dead calf on the grafted calf, you should try O-No-More, made by Springer Magrath (http://springermagrath.com/o_no_more.asp). Put it on the calf when still wet from birth or dampen the calf with a wet towel and apply. It’s ingredients smell good to cattle and also encourage cows and heifers to clean their calves.
In the spring of 2011 we had a terrible time with the Central Missouri weather in the spring with deep snow and extremely cold temperatures, and the cows were not wanting to clean their calves completely or even claim them. The claiming part could be due to that we were calving out large numbers of cows in a small area. Once I discovered the O-No-More and got our first shipment in we started using it right away. It was a complete turn around with both problems. Calves were licked clean and dry…thus preventing them from freezing due to still being wet in awful weather. And mothers were claiming babies.