When I was a kid of about 12 or 13, it was one of my chores to milk by hand a couple of our cows, each morning and each evening.
One of the cows was a rather small Jersey, and from her I milked about three gallons of milk a day, and let the calf nurse the rest. The other cow was a large Black Polish animal we called Poley. She was easy to milk and gave about five gallons a day. She was a gentle-natured cow and seemed more intelligent than the other cows we had.
Early one morning I went out to the milking shed. There stood Poley in a fenced pen with a newborn calf. I shut the gate and put some hay and cotton seed hulls out for Poley. Of course, one doesn't drink the milk for several days (it is called colostrum at this stage, and provides exceptional nutrients and helps immunize the calf against harmful bacteria).
Sometimes it is necessary to milk out some of the milk and give it to the hogs if the calf or calves do not relieve the cow of enough.
Well, the next morning when I approached the cow pen, there were two calves nursing on Poley. She had given birth to twins!
The next day, as I neared the pen, I saw Poley standing with three identical calves. Triplets! This was highly unusual. I think statistics reveal that there is only one chance in 105,000 of a cow giving birth to triplets. All the calves were successfully nursing, and they were all female, which indicated they would all be able to reproduce. If a male calf has a twin female or any females in the case of triplets, the female calves will be unable to reproduce. They are called freemartens. If all the twins or triplets are the same sex, they will be normal.
It was much more work caring for Poley and her triplets, seeing that they each got enough milk, and then training them to eat the calf starter-mix, which contained many nutrients, including cotton seed meal. Fortunately, many people had heard about the unusual multiple birth and the good cow, so we were able to get a good price for two of the heifers. We kept the third one for a future milker.
In subsequent years, Poley had only one calf each time and all her progeny grew up to be excellent milk cows.
Unfortunately, one night when Poley was grazing in the bottom field, the barbed wire fence surrounding the quicksand pond broke. Poley stepped on the surface and she was pulled under by the treacherous quicksand. Only the end of her tail could be seen before it, too, disappeared.
Our whole family cried, and daddy built a really strong new fence around the ever-vicious quicksand pit.
-- Louis Houston is a resident of Siloam Springs. His book "The Grape-Toned Studebaker" is available locally and from Amazon.com. Send any questions or comments to [email protected] or call 524-6926. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 05/27/2015