IT'S believed to be a one in 400,000 chance, but the Varossa Brahman stud welcomed the safe arrival of female calf triplets earlier this week.
Stud principal BJ Thomas got the surprise of his life when he discovered one of his family's seven-year-old breeding cows had given birth to three heifer calves on Wednesday.
Sired by a polled bull and out of a horned cow, the stud, which operates at the family's Baralaba property, Mt Ramsay, decided to name the new arrivals Milly, Molly and Mandy after characters from a children's book.
"I've only heard of triplets a few times over the years, but to actually experience it is pretty exciting," Mr Thomas said.
"From what I have researched, having triplet calves is something like a one in 105,000 chance, but for all of them to be the same sex is around the one in 400,000 chance, which is pretty crazy when you think about it."
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The stud was first established in 1983 by Mr Thomas' grandparents and Wednesday's arrival will remain one of the stud's most memorable moments.
"We don't scan or anything like that, so this was a complete surprise to us," Mr Thomas said.
"I thought she should have calved about two weeks ago, which made me think there was something going wrong.
"However, when I went to go and have a look at her, there was three calves on the ground, which was pretty welcome surprise.
"What I could gather when I got there was that she had already had the first one and cleaned it up before the other two arrived."
In a further surprise to Mr Thomas, who took the reins as stud principal in 2009 after running his own stud, the calves did not share the same genetic traits.
"The first one looks a bit different to the other two, which leads me to think they second and third calves are identical twins," he said.
"The first one was horned while the other two were polled, which was a bit of a bonus.
"The sire is a PH bull, while their mum was horned, so it makes it pretty interesting to see how it panned out.
"Hopefully they should be able to breed eventually because from what I understand, it is when you have mixed gender triplets that they run the risk of being infertile, but given they are all female we're hopeful they will breed one day and eventually take their place in our herd.
"Over the years we've had a few twins come along but triplets is something beyond my wildest imagination."
Billy Jupp
Billy is a Senior Livestock Journalist for the Queensland Country Life based in Toowoomba. He has worked for a variety of different ACM mastheads during the past five years including the Namoi Valley Independent, Northern Daily Leader and The Land.
Billy is a Senior Livestock Journalist for the Queensland Country Life based in Toowoomba. He has worked for a variety of different ACM mastheads during the past five years including the Namoi Valley Independent, Northern Daily Leader and The Land.
