Tommy Meehan from Lifford, Co Donegal received a welcome surprise this week when one of his 330 cows delivered three healthy heifers. The dairy farmer told Irish Farmers Journal: “The cows were scanned alright, but I didn’t know they were triplets. It was a shock because we have CCTV in with them, we had put a few in that night to calf. I woke in the middle of the night ant there was two calves in the pen, I thought great, she’s had twins. It was when I woke in the morning time, there was another one.”

Family

This marks the first time that any generation of the Meehans herd have had triplet calves.

The cow in question was sired by a Holstein Friesian stock bull and the Donegal farmer plans to breed the cows again in a couple of years.

Tommy farms 330 dairy cows on 450 acres with his brothers John and Jim, along with three of their children and Tommy’s own son Keith. Almost 200 acres are used for tillage crops including wheat, barley and oats. The cows have been housed since early winter due to bad weather at the back-end of last year and have been fed silage and meal while indoors.

“I wasn’t feeding the cow for multiple calves either, I was just very lucky,” said Tommy.

Read more

Tullamore Farm update: final preparations before calving commences

Creed confirms €200m European fund for Irish food processors