Lyn Haskins, who operates a small beef farm near Smiths Falls, Ont., became an Ottawa Valley celebrity last week.
More accurately, his five-year-old Hereford cow, named Mother, was the celebrity after giving birth Aug. 26 to four healthy calves.
“They just kept coming,” the 51-year-old rancher said. “It was amazing.”
In Saskatoon, a professor at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine confirmed the amazing part. Albert Barth estimated the chance of healthy quadruplet calves is in the range of one in 700,000 births.
“This is very unusual,” the professor specializing in animal reproduction said. “You sometimes come across very prolific females and this is obviously one.”
Two years ago Mother gave birth to twins.
Haskins noted that his small beef herd now numbers 10 and Mother has contributed 60 percent.
Mother was bred through artificial insemination but Barth said that would have no effect on its prolific record as a breeder: “This would be a genetic thing, a genetic predisposition.”
Haskins said no fertility drugs were used.
