South Canterbury Cow Calved Red, White, And Blue Triplets

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28130, 20 November 1956, Page 14

South Canterbury Cow Calved Red, White, And Blue Triplets

t (New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, November 19. If cows were regular readers of newspapers the herd of Mr William J. Spring, of Seadown, near Timaru, would have been lowing in derision during the week-end at the claim advanced in England for Nita, a Milking Shorthorn on a Derbyshire farm. Nita was reported to have produced triplets, and a cowman on the farm said: “It is a thing any farmer would tell you just can’t happen.” The cabled news item did not say what colours the calves were, which is a pity. Mr Spring’s herd all know that one

of their number—her name is said to be Bessie—produced red, white, and blue triplets on January 27, 1949. Patriotic Bessie, a blue roan Milking Shorthorn, first calved as a three-year-old with twins, had twins again the next year, and as a five-year-old in 1949 calved a red bull, a white bull, and a blue heifer.

Her picture, with her three calves, and her story appeared in the “Journal of Agriculture” the following May. Bessie is the only cow in recorded history to calve thus in colour, but in 1950 a Jersey in the herd of Mr William S. McEwen, of Tamahere, in the Waikato, performed an equally extraordinary feat. She produced identical triplets. The Ruakura Animal Research Station near Hamilton has the biggest collection in the world of Identical twin cattle, and has used them for years in some of its most valuable research.