The "Doing A Triple Take" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading yet another newspaper story that deals with Lancaster County farmland and those that call it their home as well as their place of business.  Story in the newspaper had a big, bold headline that read "DOING A TRIPLE TAKE" and featured a young girl who was standing next to Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.  The newly named calves were just recently born to the same mother on Kreider Farm on Indian Village Road in Penn Township.  

The new triplets

A cow having triplet calves is very rare, but when all three calves are females...now that's almost unheard of.  Penn Township is located near the small town known as Manheim in Lancaster County.  The Kreider farm is a dairy farm that has been part of the landscape in Manheim for as long as I can remember.  I often drive past it on my way to visit friends that live nearby.  About five years ago I took a tour of Kreider's Dairy Farm and had a chance to see how the farm works.  I wrote a story at the time which you can find amongst my many stories on this blog.

Another view of mom and the triplets

Just type "Kreider Dairy Farm" in the white box at the top left of this page to find it.  Well, while reading the latest story about the birth of the triplet calves, I found that cows having triplets is 1 in 10,000 and the odds of them being three females is 1 in 100,000.  The mother of these triplets is named "Raspberry" and is happy and healthy.  They had expected twins, but were quite surprised when they saw an additional head pop out.  One of the owner's of the farm, Khalee Kreider, said that the three new calves will become part of the farm's milking herd which now numbers about 1,700 cows.  Now...that's a whole lot of bottles of milk!  If you care to take a tour of the farm you can visit their website at kreiderfarms.com/farm-tour.  The tour, which is the one that I took, includes a story about the history of the farm, access to the farm's observation tower and a drive through the farm, including the maternity barn.  It was reported that at times you may actually see a calf being born as the bus drives through the barns.  The Kreider family hopes to continue to produce their dairy products for those in the south-eastern part of Pennsylvania for years into the future.  Their herd is certainly helping with that wish by creating three more members of the milking herd.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.