Peggy Revell
A rare triplet birth has turned this year’s calving season into one for the local history books.
“It was a surprise,” said Wayne Flatt, whose farm just north of Emo welcomed healthy triplet Charolais calves to the world back on May 9.
“I’ve been farming for some 44 years,” he remarked. “First time that I’ve had a set a triplets.
“I’ve had lots of twins, but not triplets.”
Making the odds even more unlikely, the newborn calves are identical—all three are male, and a deep red in colour with matching markings.
If it weren’t for being tagged, they can’t be told apart from one another, noted Flatt.
A cow having triplets is a one-in-105,000 chance, said Gary Sliworsky, the local ag rep for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, citing the available numbers which come from a study published in the United States back in the 1920s.
This number isn’t even a survival rate—more of a “what comes out rate,” he explained.
Having surviving calves that are all the same gender is even more unlikely.
“Even with twins, a lot of the times it’s one of each,” noted Sliworsky.
“Three identicals to boot is rarer.”
The newborn triplets aren’t actually a first for the district, Flatt said, recalling that another set had been born some 40-50 years ago in this area.
The first calf was born at 10:30 p.m., he recounted.
From the size of this first calf and the size of the mother, Flatt knew a second calf was possible, so he wasn’t surprised to see two calves when he returned to the barn around midnight.
“[Then] I saw this lump sitting off to the side, and I got closer and thought, ‘That’s another calf!’
“Sure enough, she had three of them.”
Despite the surprise, Flatt said he didn’t wake up his wife, Marilyn, who was already asleep—knowing she would be so excited she wouldn’t be able to sleep, even with work the next morning.
“So I just went back to bed and that’s it,” he remarked, adding he broke the news to her in the morning.
The calving itself wasn’t difficult—as it sometimes can be, Flatt said.
This is especially fortunate given there’s no large-animal veterinarian in the area, meaning local farmers are on their own during calving season.
The mother is a “good milker,” Flatt added, and was bred with one of the bulls on his farm.
At nine years old, she has had a calf every year and never lost one, he noted.
“Now she’s got three, so she’s a paying asset to the farm, that’s for sure!”
All three of the calves are healthy and “going good,” Flatt said, but the biggest concern right now is making sure they get enough to eat.
“[A cow] doesn’t normally have three calves, so to milk enough for three calves is abnormal, too,” he explained, noting he might have to supplement the newborns with a bottle or whatever else he can set up.
This has to be done fairly soon so they can adapt to it, otherwise they won’t take to it.
Flatt has another cow which just calved, so he might try milking her and putting it in a bottle to see if the triplet calves will take to it.
Unless put in a headgate, this other cow wouldn’t let a calf that’s not its own to milk from it, he noted, and he doesn’t want to “mess around” trying to milk it and then trying to feed the calves.
If the newborns do take to feeding with a bottle, Flatt said he then can buy milk replacer to feed them.
“It’s not something that you look forward to having because it’s a lot of extra work,” he said, referring to the triplet birth.
“It makes history, though!”
