Holy cow, cow, cow. Rare triplets born on Montana ranch

They arrived too late for an April Fool’s Day hoax, but just in time to herald the arrival of spring.

Rare triplet calves were born April 2 on the Badger Ranch east of Cascade. Owned by ranch manager Iain McGregor, the trio of Black Angus heifers are all healthy and up on their feet. Cow 3202 seems a bit perplexed by the number of calves demanding her attention, but allows all three to nurse without objection.

“I’m just getting to the point now where I’m comfortable that they’re all going to make it,” McGregor said. “I figured I would come in here one of these days and she would have laid on one or stepped on one — keeping track of one calf and then accidentally taking out another. But at this point they’re strong enough and active enough that they’ll stay out of her way.

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“And to have all three of them as heifers makes it even more unique,” he added. “It’s amazing.”

While the birth of twin calves is fairly common, occurring in beef breeds roughly once in every 90 live births, triplets are far rarer — occurring just once in every 105,000 deliveries. Add in that all three calves were of the same gender and all three were born alive and the odds are even lower; about one in 700,000

The event is so rare, in fact, that the Montana Department of Livestock doesn’t keep consistent records on it.

“I have never heard of triplets that have survived in Montana in the 20-some years that I’ve been here,” said Dr. Bill Layton, administrator of the Department of Livestock’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. “What’s rare is that they made it to term. What’s even rarer is that they’re alive. What you’re dealing with is competition within the uterus. That’s one reason why twinning is so infrequent in large animals, because they’re offspring competing for the same nutrients. Oftentimes one will come out very weak and is not going to survive. When you have three of them come out to survive — that’s a rarity.”

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McGregor discovered the triplets during a routine check of the pasture where he keeps his bred cows. Shortly after 3 p.m. he spotted cow 3202 with two calves on the ground.

“She had one up and licked off and there was another one right next to her that she was pretty well ignoring,” McGregor said. “So I grabbed the one she was ignoring and put it in the back of the pickup and took it to the barn. I went and got my four-wheeler and thought I’d throw the other calf in the sled to tow behind and she’d just follow it in.”

When he got back to cow 3202, there was now a third newborn calf on the ground, with no other cows there to claim it. McGregor was accustomed to occasional twin calves, but that third calf had him questioning whether triplets were even a possibility.

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“They were all within a few feet of each other and there wasn’t another cow within an eighth of a mile,” he notes. “They’re all exactly the same size, and (3202) was the only cow that calved in that two- or three-hour window.”

All three calves were small, averaging about 45 pounds. Most newborn single birth calves weigh about 80 pounds. Despite their small size, all three heifers appeared healthy, but it quickly became apparent that cow 3202 wasn’t quite sure what to do with all of them.

“She was kind of freaked out,” Iain’s wife, Farrah McGregor, said of the cow’s initial reaction. “She was just paying attention to the one born first. Iain tried to put two in the pen with her at the same time, but she kept kicking at one of them.”

“She didn’t know what to do with three, figuring only one was hers,” Iain added. “So I started rotating one at a time; getting the other ones completely out of sight and rotating through so they could each get their colostrum and everything.”

Colostrum is a specialized form of milk produced by all mammals (including humans) in the final days before giving birth. Colostrum delivers its nutrients in a very concentrated, low-volume form, and helps to stimulate the newborn’s immune through the ingestion of some of the mother’s antibodies.

“I stuck with them until about midnight Saturday, rotating them through,” McGregor said.

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“Once she got all three up and realized all three of them smelled right, then she was content with them and let them all nurse,” Farrah McGregor added.

Nursing will be a source of concern as the calves grow larger and demand more milk. It’s almost certain that cow 3202 will not produce enough milk to satisfy all three.

“I already know she won’t,” Iain McGregor admitted. “I’m going to leave all three calves on her just for a few days, and then by mid-week I’ll pull at least one and maybe two off of her.”

That means bottle feeding the calves at least twice a day. It’s a tedious job that will last several months, until the calves digestive systems develop to the point where they can flourish on solid foods alone.

But the McGregors have two young sons, Hal who is 9, and Rial who’s 7. Both boys are active in 4-H, and bottle feeding a couple of bum calves seems like a perfect project for them.

One additional change is in the works. McGregor said he was already planning to attach new ear tags to cow 3202. Given that the young cow was born in 2013, is now three years old and just gave birth to three live calves, from now on she will be referred to as cow 333.