That’s a Wrap!
And that’s a wrap!
Our 2025 calving season ended with Shat Acres Raisin Pie delivering a perfect red bull calf. While Pie greeted her newborn with a moo and a licking, I texted our vet letting them know our challenging calving season had come to a successful and very welcome ending. Having to work intimately with our vet on some heart-wrenching calving and mothering losses this year, they were as relieved as we were to hear that the happy ending had arrived.
Our euphoria did not last long. While still cleaning her new baby, Raisin Pie buckled her legs under her and lay down in the pen. This is not normal behavior following calving. With a groan, Ray and I looked at each other.
“Not a good sign,” I said. “This is exactly what Pie did last year after her first calf was born. You’re going to have to reach inside to see if there is another calf in there.”
Shat Acres Raisin Pie is a special cow in many ways.
In 2017 Pie was sold at the National Western Stock Show to a breeder from Virginia. She was 19 months old and weighed 992 lbs., a big, healthy, yearling heifer. In 2019, when Pie was four years old, the breeder called and asked if we wanted to buy her back. Surprised, we asked why and what he planned to do with her.
"Probably kill her."
We were shocked and devasted. A beautiful daughter of Grand Champion Cinnamon Raisin, and a Grand Champion herself, we knew we needed to buy Pie back to rescue her from being killed.
Little did we know she was almost dead already.
When she arrived home Pie was nothing but skin and bones, eyes sunken in. Most of her thick Highland hair fallen off. Raisin Pie weighed 972 lbs., twenty pounds less than she had as a heifer over two years prior. However, Pie was the lucky one. The farm where she had been starved and abused had dead cow and calf carcasses strewn throughout the pastures and paddocks. We are very careful where we sell our Highlands. This was supposedly a reputable breeder. We had no idea of the suffering Pie had endured. We immediately had our vet check her when she arrived home.
"I'm not sure she will survive, but if anyone can save her, Ray can," adding, "and you should know, she is pregnant."
As Pie regained her health and condition, she carried, and gave birth on July 6, 2019, to not just one healthy calf, but two! Twin black bull calves, Rob and Roy are now six years old steers weighing a ton each. They live contentedly on our farm, bringing awe and joy to so many.
(See: The Life of Pie on FB June 30, 2024, or our website www.shatacres.com under Janet’s Blog 6/30/24)
Pie is unique in another way. Highlands are very protective about their newborns. It is how they survived in the wild Highlands of Scotland for 1600 years. Even your gentlest and friendliest cow can become aggressive towards her humans when her calves are first born. We respect that instinct and give those cows that request it their space and privacy with their offspring. Not Pie! She is totally mellow and comfortable sharing her babies with us and anyone who wants to spend time with them. Perhaps grateful for our saving her life, Pie trusts us completely to handle and work with her if needed, even in the most stressful situations.
Which we now needed to do.
Raisin Pie was the only Shat Acres cow in our over half a century raising Highlands to have produced and raised two sets of twins. Five years after Rob and Roy were born, in 2024 Pie birthed another set of black bull twins, Ethan and Allen.
“Get me a glove. I’m going in to check for another calf.”
Donning the shoulder length yellow glove, Ray, as Pie lay in the straw licking her new calf, thrust his arm into Pie.
“Get me the chains. There’s another calf up in there.”
“Great”, I said. “Just what we need.”
Pie never moved as Ray latched onto one foot, pulling it far enough out to loop a chain up over its fetlock. I made a loop in the other end of the chain as he was able to grab the other foot. Luckily this calf was coming forward in the correct position, unlike baby Allen, last year's second twin to arrive. Applying the loop to the second foot, the hook was attached to the center of the chain. A sturdy rake handle was slid into the hook for leverage. Leaning back, Ray pulled hard on the rake handle. Pie was still licking her new little boy that had exited first.
With a hard pull and a gush of amnionic fluid, Pie released her hostage. We did not expect the calf to be alive. Pie clearly did. Rising to her feet, she turned and started licking Twin #2.
"It's another bull," Ray announced.
That was a relief. Had it been a heifer, it would have only a 10% chance of being fertile. In cattle, with mixed gender twins, the heifer is almost always sterile. In utero, testosterone from the developing bull fetus destroys the female organs of the other twin. The heifer twin is called a "Free Martin", meaning it will never breed, sealing its fate as a pet rather than a momma cow, or perhaps becoming a beef animal.
Shaking its head, Twin #2, made its presence known with a blatting sound as momma cleaned him off. With navels trimmed and dunked in iodine, BoSe (Vitamin E and Selenium) injections administered, we stepped back to take a breath and gaze at the amazing gift(s) Pie had blessed us with (again).
Twinning in Highlands is not impossible, but rare. Highlands are beef cattle, without the enormous and genetically altered udders of milk cows. They generally produce just enough milk to raise and sustain one calf. Sometimes a Highland will reject one of its twins, an instinctive trait ensuring at least one of its calves survives. Pie has loved all of her babies, whether they come singly or in twos. From the Cinnamon line, she produces ample milk to raise both calves. Raisin Pie's dam is the amazing 12X Grand Champion and 3X Supreme Champion of Show Shat Acres Cinnamon Raisin--who herself had a set of heifer twins, Crimson and Clover. Cinnamon Raisin, with babies Crimson and Clover garnered Grand Champion Cow/Calf in Denver, CO at the NWSS in 2011, the only set of Highland twins ever to do so.
Twins can be adorable. They cavort and play together, they cuddle to sleep together, and they bring smiles and laughter to anyone watching them.
And they can be a lot of work.
Shat Acres William and Shat Acres Wallace, Pie's 2025 dynamic duo, were no exception. William, who came first was smaller. He wanted to nurse quickly but had difficulty latching onto Pie's engorged udder. Time was of the essence, so Ray milked out some colostrum which William eagerly sucked down in a bottle. One calf dosed with Pie's antibody rich colostrum! Wallace, the second to arrive, who needed assistance, was tired and not as interested in nursing as quickly as William. After resting a bit, Ray was able to help him to the milk bar, and he consumed his dose of colostrum antibodies directly from the source.
William had to have the teat inserted into his mouth for the first couple of days, but once he latched on, sucked eagerly. After the initial assistance, Wallace was a champ at getting his nutritional needs met. Both twins are now doing just fine, and Raisin Pie is doing what she does best--being the best momma cow she can be. Pie will need some extra nutrition of her own to raise her two growing boys. She won't mind getting a scoop of grain morning and night to keep up her milk production.
Shat Acres Raisin Pie turned ten years old on May 29, 2025. She has had an amazing life. Surviving abuse and starvation, having been sold and bought back, at ten years old she is the proud momma of eleven offspring, all alive and well. We could not be more grateful for this special cow. She has miraculously gifted us with not one, not two, but three sets of healthy twins and some singles in-between.
Leaning on the gate looking into her pen, Ray and I thanked Pie for blessing us with healthy, adorable twins William and Wallace. With a whisper we added, "You don't need to do that again."
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