Double Dutch, Twice as nice!

Well do I have a story to tell on myself. Just when you begin to think your something of a real weekend cowboy one of your cows goes and makes you look like a goat rancher! Ok no offense to you goat people surely you have tougher hides, i've heard the language used when one gets out again.

Back to my story. I went up to check on my cows because I knew that Strawberry Patches, we call her Patches, was due. Unfortunately for some unknown reason she slipped her calf last year. She was bred and ran with a bull for some time. I took her up to our foothill pasture and in January of 2025 noticed a weanling bull calf chasing her. This immedietly prompted two things, I loaded her in the trailer and he had a life altering surgery as he was not what I considered bull power. He made a really nice steer. Well I got her down and when time came put her back with the bull making her one of the earliest to calve this year.

I got up to the pasture and no cows were visible. I headed off over and up the hills to see if I could locate them. I finally found the rest of the herd on the steepest hillside grazing sideways across it. However, no patches and two young heifers also missing. Off I go around the back side of the pasture to find them. I come upon the trio on a less steep side and Patches lets me get close enough to snap a few pics of her new baby. I am pretty sure it is a heifer.

No sooner do I get a picture when Patches decides to high tail it to tim buck too. She takes off at a breakneck trot with calf right behind her. I had gotten a picture so was not thinking of her any more I head back to the truck. On my way I see her cut up ahead of me through brush and headed over a ridge that I am crossing. When I get to the top she is down the other side circling me in a huge circle to get back behind me. Is she started at 6 oclock behind me she was all the way around past 12 and moving to 3 oclock. I remember thinking she is moving, why would she do that she let me get close. Now the shock comes.

Fast forward 6 days and I get a text telling me I have two calves up there and they look like twins. I thought they don't know cows, one of the other cows had a calf that looks like hers and they think it's twins. But I do need to get some of my kids show cows down including patches so we can be working on the heifer. My kids and I head up on day 7 from when I was up there originally to get try and catch them and to figure out which other mom had her calf. Once we get there and find the herd low and behold

IT IS TWINS!!!!! I could not believe it. I am looking at the other cows and no one has calved. No one is nursing and no one is caringn for this other calf. That LOOKS exactly like the first one. Now how did I miss this! Looking back she must have been circling to get back to the second calf.

This amazing mom is rasing these two heifers on her own and staying fit to boot. I will be doing DNA to see if they are identical or fraternal. Fraternal twins are hereditary so plan to keep these two.

What to name them was a problem because I had already told people when I thought there was one her name was Strawberry Jubillee. Yet given twins and their dad is Dr Seuss we chose Thing 1 and Thing 2. My kids will show them for 4H at our county fair and we will show them at State Fair in the Longhorn show.