I have lived by the same neighbor for 15 years. Up till three or four years ago they never had twin calves. Now they have had four or more sets in the last couple years. I think more than that maybe five or six sets. Is it just some bulls throw more twins? The cows are mixed newer ones and old ones he has had several years.

-- Susan (mdefran@cei.net), April 12, 2002

Answers

I had the same problem a few years ago.Vet told me it was the Ladino clover i had fed 9 months earlier.He said it has a lot of estrogen in it and can make cows release more than one egg.Just a thought.

-- E Campbell (whighlan@msn.com), April 12, 2002.

Bulls will throw as many twins as the cows present eggs! Unless your talking about the sire's heifers, then maybe. I doubt feeding clover is going to pull more twins, has a better reputation for poor breeding and problems, not increased productivity.

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), April 12, 2002.

Yes, at least two sets of twins have died. And the twins take longer to grow out it seems. So twins in cattle are not desirable. This is not a large herd. There are about 20 cows more or less. I haven't counted. I just thought it was a high number of twins in such a small herd and I was courious.

-- Susan (mdefran@cei.net), April 12, 2002.

Also, in cattle, if one twin is a male and the other a female, she can end up being a "freemartin", a name for a sterile female calf. Apparently in utero the male hormones cross the placenta and render the female sterile and not able to reproduce. Thank goodness this is not the case with sheep or goats!

-- Kate in New York (Kate@sheepyvalley.com), April 12, 2002.

Do you know if they use Bovine Growth Hormone?

Here's an article off the internet: *************************************

"Bovine Economics"

Having twins is usually a cause for celebration. But for a dairy farmer a cow that bears twin calves can be a bad omen: twin births weaken both the mother and her offspring. One or two sets of twins in any herd is par for the course, but when Lisbon, New York dairyman Jay Livingston discovered 20 sets of twins among his 200 milk- producing cows, it was a calamity. He lost little time in dispatching the 40 calves to the slaughterhouse where they were ground up for bologna and hot dogs. Many of the sickly mothers will soon follow their weakling calves, ending up as hamburger in the school lunch program.

The lot of these cows is more than an inexplicable twist of fate. Livingston had been injecting his herd with Monsanto's new genetically engineered growth hormone known as rBGH-trade name Posilac which promises to increase the amount of milk a cow produces....

For the first couple of months on rBGH "our cows seemed to be doing 0K" [Livingston] says. "Their milk production increased from 40 to 65 pounds per day. Then they just went all to pieces. We had a half a dozen die and then the rest started ''experiencing major health problems, cows went off their feed, experienced severe weight loss, mastitis and serious foot problems....

Dairy Profit Weekly, [an] industry report, quotes Mike Connor, a dairy nutritionist in Black Earthy County, Texas, who said two-thirds of his client farmers are phasing out rBGH. Noting recurrent side effects, he said, "Many concluded that the risk was not worth the benefit" Dick Bengen, an 800-cow dairy producer from Everson, Washington, recently told a Toronto dairy symposium that he had disappointing results using rBGH on his herd, saying that many of the cows with increased milk production require more feed. The extra costs -- a shot per cow every two weeks runs $5.80 -- and the additional feed made the economic gains marginal at best.

-- Judy (JMcFerrin@aol.com), April 12, 2002.

Susan,

4 or more sets from the same mothers or from different mothers? There is a genetic component to twinning in catte. Male and female parents contribute to the phenenon genitically.

Ross,,,ever heard of identical or maternal twins?? A single fertilized egg splits after the first division and yields two identical complete embryos/offspring...So, susan are these twins typically two heifers or bulls or mixed? Twinning caused my multipul ovulations can indeed be enhanced by hormones...has your friend done any hormone treatment to enhance the settle rate of an artificial insemination program?

I personally kept all mothers who could bear and raise twins because the net pounds of cattle on weaning day was more with those females...I had several who genetically had twins with no help and raised them themselves three years out of five. When the herd weaning average for non twins was 650 pounds, the twins would be at about 485 each...which makes 970 pounds at weaning...super moms more like.

Oscar

-- Oscar Will (owill@mail.whittier.edu), April 12, 2002.

I am pretty sure he does no hormone implants. Just feeds hay with maybe some grain in the winter. He does seem to wean the calves sooner than my father did. I am not good at guessing weight but they seem to be about 350-400 lb at weaning. Dad just loved his cows and they were his hobby and for us to eat. He never made much money at it and didn't mind. So maybe Dad didn't wean his soon enough. But Dad only had twins twice in 45 years of owning cattle.

Some of my neighbors twins have been the same sex and some heifer and bull. I don't think it is the same cows having twins each year. What ever the reason I just love looking at those cute babies twins or singles. Someday I hope to have a few cattle again.

Thank you for the helpful replies.

-- Susan (mdefran@cei.net), April 13, 2002.

Twinning in cattle is actualy very normal. With the exception of freemartins (male and female twins)there isn't usualy much of a problem. Some people don't like a cow to have twins on her first pregnancy but for the most part problems aren't much more common than with a single calf pregnancy. The cow is perfectly capable of producing enough mil for both babies provided she is recieving enough notrition. And after all is said and done you end up with two calves instead of just one. As a side note twinning in horses is almost as common. However, a mare's repro. tract is a little different and so the pregnancy rarely results in the birth of healthy twins. If the mare manages to give birth to live twins than they are most often very small. In fact most twin pregnancies are spontaneously aborted or one twin embryo is reabsorbed fairly early on. One of the reasons that it is important for a vet to check on a mare that is pregnant os so that he/she can "burst" or pop one of the embryos if there is are twins. This helps to ensure that the mare retains the pregnancy and has a healthy foal. Cattle however, are perfectly capable of having healthy twins.

-- Erika (misserika129@hotmail.com), April 13, 2002.