A Big Blue Surprise

This was a thrilling week here on the funny farm.  Remember Blue, our milk cow?  Well we bought her open, meaning that she was not bred.  No babies in the future.  After milking her and raising calves on her throughout the summer and into the early fall we decided to let her go dry (stop producing milk).  We were going to sell her because there was no need to have her around if she wasn’t going to produce milk or raise babies.  Unfortunately, the weekend before the sale she got her hoof caught up and hurt herself enough that she limped pretty bad when she walked.  We decided to wait until she was healed up before we brought her to the sale.  Time passed and she was finally starting to get better so we started talking about the sale again.  Oddly enough about a week before Christmas she started making milk again.  I am not talking about a little milk, her bag got full!  We had an older calf in with her and thought maybe he started nursing on her again but surely it wouldn’t bring her into milk like that.  Then she started showing signs that maybe she wanted to have a baby.  Things were getting even stranger!  We watched her closely through Christmas and then had New Year’s come and go and things were still fishy.  The sale barns had been closed due to Christmas and New Year’s so we thought that at the next sale we would get rid of her.  Things were not looking right, she had been hurt and now maybe she had some other strange things going on.  Tuesday (Jan. 8th, the day before the sale) Michael went to the pen to check the water and he was greatly surprised (to say the least) to see Blue standing over two brand new twin baby calves.  What a surprise that was!  We had written off pregnancy given that she has shown signs for so long we thought she was having other issues!  We were shocked.  Did not even have words for what had happened.  Better yet they are twin heifer (girl) calves!  In the dairy world if they aren’t a heifer they are worth next to nothing.  Not only did we buy a cow that wasn’t supposed to be bred but we got to use her all summer and then got 2 baby calves out of the deal!  They are gorgeous fraternal twins which is great in the twin calf world as when they are identical there are frequently genetic disorders.