The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Cattle => Topic started by: Loobylou on August 02, 2015, 08:30:11 am
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So if a cow has twins and she has one of each sex, is the female always a freemartin? Not that I've got. Just wanted to know
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Not always but generally.
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So How would you know if they were freemartins? Would you test at a certain age?
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Realistically you wouldn't bother testing, just fatten it for meat.
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Ok that's fine, thanks
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Realistically you wouldn't bother testing, just fatten it for meat.
Agree.
But treat and handle her like a heifer, because she may be fertile - so she may come a-bulling and if she's with entire males, could get herself pregnant ;)
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Realistically you wouldn't bother testing, just fatten it for meat.
Agree.
But treat and handle her like a heifer, because she may be fertile - so she may come a-bulling and if she's with entire males, could get herself pregnant ;)
:o well that is one beast you would certainly want to keep!
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Some people think that a freemartin won't be a breeder, and therefore they can safely run her with uncastrated males and/or the bull. I was simply making the point that you shouldn't assume that she won't be a breeder, so she could come a-bulling before you would want any heifer bulled, and if you don't treat her like any other heifer, she could be running with males you would not want fathering calves, giving you a teenage pregnancy with a non-ideal father.
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Am I correct in assuming that the heifer, IE freemartin, may not be infertile? I was told that almost all of them are ???
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No.
The assumption is that a freemartin is infertile because of the male hormones from her twin brother that entered her bloodstream before she was born.
However - many things in nature are not absolutely guaranteed. Therefore, given the remote (but unlikely) possibility that the heifer could get pregnant, it's better to play on the safe side.
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One of the cows in my partners herd is a twin, she's just had her 2nd calf :)
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The big issue here really is no one would want to feed a cow for 2 years to find out its not fertile ... So practically you would assume a female twin of a mixed se Ed set of twins is infertile and fatten for meat.
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You dont necessarily have to wait two years for her to bull, some of my heifers have come bulling at one year. Thankfully i dont run them with the rest of the herd and bulls. :relief:
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Some non breeders can be detected by vet exam eg short vagina, small/absent ovaries, but others may appear normal on scanning/ palpation but never breed due to eg absent oviducts. It is quite routine in this area to check any brought in cattle before bulling usually at the same time as bvd screening. You cant always be right though, one client has a homebred jenny with a 4" penis at the clitoris and she calves reguarly.
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One of the cows in my partners herd is a twin, she's just had her 2nd calf :)
Female twins are usually both fertile, of course - and for some reason dairy farmers seem very happy to have female twins, lol.
It's luck of the draw whether the female will be fertile if the other twin is a male. But there's no doubt that some are.
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:wave: the guy who does most of the ai and cattle breeding stuff about here rekond when the heifer could breed she was usualy one of triplets but the cow would have slipped one or reabsorbed etc . said the twins usualy came from the same egg which split but the triplets were separate eggs . not sure but made sense
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Twins of different genders cannot possibly be from the same egg.
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It is very rare in humans but it is possible to have twins of different genders from one egg. Something to do with an extra chromosome[/size] I think.
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Can't see how that could possibly be the case ........... reference please
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Sorry missed off a word...chromosome
There can be monozygotic boy/girl twins if the sex gene of theembryo has an extra x chromosome (the fertilized egg would be an xxy) then when the egg splits, one can have xx (girl) genes and one can have xy (boy) genes. This is rare, but possible.- Twin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin)[/size]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin[/size][/font]
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That Wiki article goes on to say
This is rare, but possible. Records show there are only 10 known cases of these type twins. The probability of this is so small that multiples having different sexes is universally accepted as a sound basis for in utero clinical determination that the multiples are not monozygotic.
So I'll stand by my statement ! :D
Twins of different genders cannot possibly be from the same egg.
The section in Wiki is about unusual twinnings in humans, there's no information as to whether it is known to ever happen in other mammals.
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Why is it when scientists explain stuff they use long words which are a struggle to pronounce? ???
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Only about 10% of these male female twins are fertile according to studies. Weird that the same doesn't happen in humans and other mammals, no?
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I said humans and rare. The female "twin" would have no ovarian development, "Turners Syndrome".
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Turner syndrome is XO - the person only has a single X chromosome and so although appears female they have certain features which are common among sufferers. They are usually infertile however I know one woman who did go on to have a child despite having Turners.
I don't think you would / could get Turner from being a twin. It's more likely that it's due to the male gamete missing the X.
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But in spite of all these technicalities, no matter whether the twins have come from one egg or two, and regardless of how many X or Y chromosomes are present or missing, are we not still agreed that a heifer calf twinned with a bull calf, is more likely than not to be sterile? :sunshine:
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Or, to put it even more simply, would I risk trying to breed from a freemartin? Answer - no.