Charolais Cow Births Quads in Saskatchewa

It's calving season and every year, some place, someone has that story that really sticks out.  Today that story comes to us from Saskatchewan family.

Meet the Lamports, dad Calvin, daughter Kayla (22) and son Layne.  On Friday March 4th they put their 5 year old Charolais cow in the barn for calving.  Then they noticed something was amiss.  This cow had given birth to twins each of the last two years, so the family expected this year and this birth to be the same.  Never did they think 2 sets of twins or quadruplet calves.

The Lamports deliver the first three calves and thought that was it. The three newborn calves along with their exhausted mother were resting in a pen in the barn.  That is, until the fourth calf showed up about 30 minutes later.

To make sure the calves each were fully fed while on the bottle, the family made makeshift name tags, using A, B, C and D to identify the calves.  Later the 2 bull calves and 2 heifer calves were named Abbi, Bruce, Charly and Duke.  The siblings weighed in at a combined total of 189 pounds.

While life on the family farm has been a little more hectic with phone calls and questions about the calves, Kayla found time to research the chances of four live births from one cow.  Her answers came from new stories in March 2015 about a cow in Texas USA that delivered quads, Eeny, Meeny, Miny and Moo.  A veterinarian in that story quoted the odds at one in 11.2 million births.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/23/cow-has-quadruplets_n_6927524.html

As of Wednesday March 9th, mom, Abbi, Bruce, Charly and Duke were all doing fine.   The Lamport family were able to locate a nursing cow to assist with feedings.  The calves are up and moving and at this point, the cow family will remain together in the barn.  However come this fall, the Lamport family is in hopes of selling some or all of the calves.

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