MERNA- A cow in Custer County has defied odds even more slim than finding a pearl in an oyster, locating a four leaf clover, and even a human being struck by lighting twice in a lifetime. She gave birth to four healthy, lively calves; quadruplets.
The widely accepted odds by veterinary experts of a cow having four calves in one pregnancy is one in 700,000. Those odds slim significantly if all calves are live at birth: one in 11.2 million.
The cow, affectionately given the nickname “Quad Mom” by those at the Sterner farm west of Merna, was found by farm hand Joe Cool with one wet newborn calf already standing beside her. The size of that calf led Jeri Sterner and Cool to check for more.
Sterner described how a normal calving turned into something she and many other ranchers had never seen.
“I stuck my arm in her and I said, ‘Well there’s a twin, he’s a little bigger.’ So we put him out, got him going and so I reached in to check her and I looked at Joe and I said ‘There’s another one!’. So we brought that one out. That made triplets. We were trying to put them on a four-wheeler trailer and they were climbing and falling off and I reached back in there and said ‘Joe, there’s another one!’. They got up, jumped up, and were healthy and strong. We tried to put them on a wagon and they were falling off so we had to tie them down!”
Sterner told KCNI/KBBN News that she and her husband Clifford have been farming for over 40 years. Their farm and ranch operation currently stands at about 3,000 acres plus grassland and a cow-calf herd that she estimates holds about 300 cows. A little veterinary work finds its way to Sterner at times as well. The weight and health of the calves was perhaps the most impressive.
“Two of them weighed 30 pounds and two of them weighed 35. When you carry that many calves and put all that nutrition to keep them that healthy, usually like on twins or triplets you might have one dead one all the time because they don’t have enough nutrition into that uterus to make them survive.”
As far as the cow? A normal bull-bred and run-in-the-pasture cow, according to Sterner. The arrival of each calf was the smooth delivery that ranchers dream of, she said.
“They all came forward, they weren’t tangled up. Nothing backwards. That’s unreal too. I mean every time I would reach in there, there’s front feet and head, front feat and head!”
Now a few days old, the calves ran, bounced, and bucked around as Sterner, her father Jim, and hired hand Shannon Klein looked on and laughed. Even an eye much less trained than theirs could see that these calves were plenty healthy and spry.
Despite being separated from three of the calves after birth, no calf rejection was shown by Quad Mom, who welcomed the family getting back together for a photo.
“She loves them all. She’d never had these three on her and we put them in there, in that stall, yesterday to take pictures and she counted them in the door and they went to her and tried to suck and she didn’t bother at all,” said Sterner.
In a county with a cattle head count well into six figures, Quad Mom and her calves overcame eight figure odds that have even the most seasoned producers captivated.
