What if the twins have two different sires?
Before we start tossing hurtful names around this cow let me explain what happened.
The breeding program that we use for our herd involves 2 steps; artificial insemination, and natural service. Artificial insemination is the first step, where we have preplanned each sire that is bred to each cow. A few days to a week after the artificial insemination the cows are turned out with a bull. The idea being that if the artificial breeding wasn't successful then the bull they are with will breed them.
All of this is our effort to ensure that all of our cows are successfully bred.
Over the past couple of years we started doing parentage verification testing on our calves. We need to be sure that the calves have the correct parents because the sire changes the value of the calf.
The cow in question had a set of twins, each twin had a different sire!
We were shocked, we've heard of this happening in dairy cows but never in beef cows. Then again how many people perform parentage testing on all their calves.
I'd love to hear your stories, if you've ever experienced anything like this please comment :)
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