It’s rare for a cow to give birth to triplets. Rarer still for all three to be the same gender.
But when Timmy Moore stepped outside earlier this month to check on a pregnant cow on his Appomattox County farm, he found that was exactly what had happened.
“He got up around 3 and just felt compelled to go check on them again before he went back to work,” said his wife Jeanette. “And it’s a good thing he did.”
The triplets — one brown, one black and one gray — all began nursing soon after they were born on April 12, adding another oddity to the situation.
Jeanette Moore said she didn’t expect the mother to accept all three offspring.
“We actually had plans if she didn’t take one. We had someone who was willing to take it and bottle-feed it.”
Not so with this 6-year-old momma.
“It’s just been really amazing to watch her be as protective as she is of these,” Jeanette Moore said.
Still, the human counterparts on the farm near Concord were no less protective early on.
“My mother-in-law and my daughter took turns monitoring them until dark,” she said.
The calves, now nearly two weeks old and about 43 pounds each, are healthy.
So is the mother, which Jeanette Moore said weathered the triple birth just fine.
“This is just purely a miracle,” she said.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement