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In February of this year, four miracles lay in the straw on Tom Clair’s farm in Maghera, Lahinch, Co Clare.
The birth of the four healthy identical Charolais heifers calves (born by natural service) was the only recorded case in history. Only two other cases of quad calves were recorded in Texas and Norfolk, but neither of these were by natural service.
The odds of quad calves is one in 180m. The likelihood of four identical heifer quads is one in a billion.
The reaction and effect it has had on Tom, his family, the community and wider farming world is testimony to just how rare the calves are.
Rosie, Mia, Jenny and Fluffy, were born to a nine-year-old Hereford cow on a Sunday morning in February.
It was not however, what Clair was expecting.
“I got an awful shock. I can hardly even believe it yet,” Clair said.
Although he had not scanned the cow, Tom suspected she was carrying twins.
“I knew she was near calving. And I checked her at half past one on Sunday morning and she was lying down and I said there was no fear of her calving.
"But then I went down at 7.30am on Sunday morning. I just walked in and looked over the pen. And two of them were standing over them and she was lying.
"I just looked sideways and the third little one was lying by her side. I got excited at that stage,” Tom explained.
“I had to go around the pen and didn’t I hear this little noise from under me and I knew it wasn’t out of any of the other three.
‘‘So I walked over and there was the other little one standing beyond in the yard,” he said.
Ah look it was a pure miracle. There is no other way about it.
“I called Enda, he wasn’t up and I said come in here now and you will see something you will never see again in your life,” Clair recalls.
If the event was out of the ordinary, the reaction has been equally so. Tom’s son Enda said that life has been changed since the miracle.
“It is crazy. Sure we didn’t realise how they were until the following days. We would have up on 4,000 or 5,000 calls. In week two, we had a book with about 3,500 names in it.
"All the papers were on to it. We had callers 24/7. We are still getting them.
"For the first three weeks it was non-stop from nine in the morning until nine at night. It came at the right time.
"The cow calved a month before the rest of them. We were lucky that we weren’t under pressure them days,’’ Enda explained.
“This is bigger than the lotto to my father,” he said.
The calves will be present on the J Grennan & Sons stand, a feed company which is sponsoring the meal for the calves, who are just over six months old at present.
Tom and Enda told the Irish Farmers Journal that the calves will never be sold and are priceless to the family.
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