Lotza Kids

Locally we are quite a few weeks into the 2014 lambing season, and it is gratifying and amazing to see the development and progress being made by all the tiny cuddly bouncing new sheep in every paddock as far as the eye can see. Real cute. Also, many mothers have more than one newcomer.

Having been “townies” all our lives, we’ve had precious little  close contact with sheep or their lambing season. In the Western Cape, I was accustomed to seeing sheep grazing in dusty brown fields in the distance, not anything like the lush green paddocks which are used on a rotation basis in this part of the world.

A few of New Zealand’s 40,000 sheep, with a Huntaway checking that his part of the flock doesn’t stray…

On a similar subject, an article dealing with a report from England caught my eye:

One mother, three calves, four different breeds:

Sometimes it can be hard to make up your mind. Do you want a sandwich or a salad for lunch today? Tough decision: both have their ups and downs. But one cow from Lincolnshire, in eastern England, has taken indecision to a new and impressive level by giving birth to triplets, each of which, says its farmer, is a different breed.

Multiple births are rare enough in cows as it is; it varies by breed of cow, but generally the likelihood of a cow having twins is between 1 and 7%, not much more than the likelihood in humans (around 3 to 4%). Triplets are much rarer, but not unheard of in breeds like the holstein-friesian (the classic black-and-white dairy cow). Where cows differ substantially from humans is that in artificially inseminating breeding cows, farmers often use sperm from multiple breeds. That allows for fraternal twins, in which two sperm cells meet two eggs, that are of totally different breeds.

Both different-breed twins and triplets are very rare, but familiar to high-turnaround cattle breeders. Different-breed triplets, though, is something we certainly have never seen before. The Lincolnshire cow, says its farmer, Peter Combridge, gave birth to three calves: one limousin, one simmental, and one charolais. All are healthy, even if they don’t look much like each other. All calves are reared on farm and sold at 13 months of age with a liveweight of 500kg.