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Once upon a
time, .... a Dexter heifer was born March 24th, 1997. She seemed
no different than the other black calves running around the pasture.
A healthy calf with nothing to indicate how special she was to become.
She became Thomas' Wilo's Cinderela ADCA #10318.
Cinderela moved
through her years producing calves on schedule. Of course, the
females had to carry on her theme in life...Bibidi, Bobidi, ....
In 2005, she came up with her suprise to her owners...twin heifers,
Astasia & Drizle. This was the first set of heifer twins in the
herd... AND one red and one was Black! This was July 4th of 2005.
Her real
"Story", however, starts on June 28th, of 2006. Just a week shy of
one year after the twin heifers, she gave us two black heifers, Sister
and Sliper, and a red bull, Prince. The Parentage DNA is back and
she's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, she produced triplets!
These heifers
seem to be identical twins; they came first. She was cleaning the
first girl at feeding time that day. She began the birthing of the
second black heifer before the chores were finished. The guys went
back out to be sure the calves were both up and nursing and observed the
birth of the third calf! She had just raised her twins with no
problem so we decided to see how she'd do with the three. We
penned her up in October because we were afraid she wouldn't be able to
keep up with them....she did!
The Vets
ultrasound has proved the heifers are Freemartins. (Freemartin =
sterile, the results of being carried with the brother and chromosomes
sharing the same space during pregnancy.)
Cinderela is our
first Dexter to repeat multiple births for us. We've had five
other Dexter cows present us with twins, but only once each so far.
One set of twins (owned by our son Stuart) was a male/female combo but
his female has had a calf every year for him! She missed the high
90% predicted for her to be a Freemartin.
We are sooo
proud to finally have the test results back so we can share this very
special Dexter success story. We've known all along they came from
Cinderela but it's so hard to believe! I've read the odds are 1 in
105,000 for beef cattle to have triplets. |
