Twins on Super Tuesday

First, I'd like to say that I've been having problems posting consistently. I'm pretty busy. Honestly, haven't even opened my computer since the last time I posted. So, I'm making a commitment to do better. I think I'm going to post at least one day of the week. Probably on Wednesday, because its the middle of the week and just feels right. I will still randomly post other days. Hopefully this works better! :)

In the six years my family has been ranching in Southeastern Montana, we've only had two sets of calves. One set was born about four years ago. It was a fraternal pair, one heifer and one bull. Unfortunately, when opposite-sex twins are born, the heifer has a 92% likelihood of being sterile. This heifer is called a freemartin heifer. Our second set of twins was born today. It was two bulls and they were actually identical. Pretty cool, huh? They were born to one of our first-year heifers, which I thought was interesting. I've never really heard of it happening. I mean, they have a hard time with one calf!! The first little bull calf born was pulled by a calf puller and the other just kinda fell out. The mama cow (she's a cow now that she's had her first calf) won't be able to produce enough milk to support both calves. Eventually one of them, probably the little one, will be kicked off the cow and will starve to death. Strangely enough, three days ago we had a still born calf. The cow is still producing milk, so we are going to try to graft one of the calves to her. That will be tomorrow's adventure and hopefully it works. I went out and snapped pictures right away after the calves were born. I was proud of myself for thinking about it! I also took some more pictures when I went out to check cows tonight.

They were only minutes old in this picture. 

The mama was probably thinking something along the lines of "There's two of them!?"

I'm a terrible photographer... but here they are from late tonight. 

 In other news, it was Super Tuesday today. I didn't want this to be a political blog, but I think there are some things to be said. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of any of the candidates. I realize that no matter what, no person is perfect, which means that no candidate can be perfect. It looks like Romney took Virginia, Massachusetts, Vermont, Idaho, and probably Ohio. Santorum took North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Gingrich took Georgia. Wyoming and Alaska haven't been completely reported. That being said, I do feel like Americans are ready to head in a different direction. But, I'll leave it at that. I'm not one to stand on a soap box and preach about things that I'm not an expert on.