PRIVEE CAILVES 
Some Families of Cattle Produce Many of Them, Others None—Heredity Involved 
But Its Working Not Simple—Attempt to Breed a Strain of Livestock 
That Will Produce an Unusual Number of Young Seems Practicable 
only one offspring at a birth could be 
made, without loss of any desirable 
qualities, to produce two or three, it 
would be a distinctly practical applica- 
tion of genetics. One of the necessary 
preliminaries to such a step is a careful 
study of cases where twins or triplets 
are born. 
It is not very uncommon for a cow 
to produce twin calves, but triplets are 
decidedly rare. One set of them! is 
shown in the accompanying photo- 
graph (Fig. 15) from their owner, N. P. 
Sorensen, of Bellingham, Wash. 
This particular case is somewhat 
puzzling because it seems to be isolated. 
So far as is known, the mother of these 
triplets had never produced more than 
one calf at a time, previous to this; 
and the sire is not known to have 
produced any other triplets or twins. 
Furthermore, the strain to which they 
belong appears to be no more prolific of 
twins or triplets, than is any other strain 
of Holstein-Friesians. 
The three calves have grown nor- 
mally, and the two bulls promise to be 
valuable breeders. The heifer, however, 
does not give any indication of sexual 
maturity, and it is probable that she is 
what stock men call a “free martin,” 
|: animals which normally produce 
an infertile female born as a twin toa 
male (or two males, in this case). 
Although no other plural birth has 
been recorded for this family, it is usual 
to find, where such a case is investigated, 
that several plural births have occurred. 
Raymond Pearl, for example, in tracing 
the history of the triplet calves shown in 
Fig. 16, found? that their dam had the 
following record: 
Three offspring, one at a time; then 
two pairs of twins in succession; next 
triplets; then a single calf and finally 
the pair of triplets represented in the 
photograph. 
It would appear that, as the cow grew 
older, the tendency to multiple births 
increased. 
Information in regard to the ancestry 
was not available in this case, but E. N. 
Wentworth has reported? an instance of 
twins in three generations, on a farm 
near Cocheco, N. H. 
MODE OF HEREDITY 
Data for investigating the heredity of 
this tendency in livestock are naturally 
scanty, but in man they are more 
abundant. The fact that a tendency 
to bear twins is due to inheritance, is 
pretty generally accepted, but no one 
has yet been able to say how this 
1 The mother of these calves is Eldred Clothilde’s Josephine 2d, a purebred Holstein-Friesian 
cow (registry No. 23525) belonging to the famous De Kol strain from which most of the fine 
Holsteins in the United States are derived. Her sire was De Dikkert 3d’s De Kol Paul, 23525, 
and her dam Eldred Clothilde’s Josephine, 50837. 
In February, 1910, the cow illustrated was purchased by N. P. Sorensen, of Bellingham, 
Wash., and since then has produced the following calves: 
Caroline Josephine, born May 10, 1910; female 160284. 
Adriana Josephine, born April 16, 1911; female 163034. 
Sir Johanna Aaggie of Mt. Springs, born April 24, 1913; male 139860. 
Joe de Kol, born May 9, 1914, male 154992. 
Joe de Kol 2d, born May 9, 1914; male 154993. 
Josephine 3d, born May 9, 1914; female, not registered. 
The last three calves named are the triplets shown in Fig. 15. 
The mother was born October 
28, 1904. The sire of the triplets is Sir Johanna Aaggie Fayne 10th (No. 81867). 
2 Bull. 204, Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, September, 1912. 
3 Breeder’s Gazette, Vol. LXII, p. 133, July 24, 1912. 
