Edna Bailey is familiar with the word “litter,” used to describe a group of sibling puppies or kittens. But she’s not really sure if that word applies to the calves one of her cows keeps producing.

A little over a month ago, “018,” as Bailey calls the cow, gave birth to her third – and maybe even her fourth – set of twins.

“As long as I’ve had cows, I don’t know what to call them,” said Bailey.

The cow’s first calf, back in 2004, may have had a non-surviving twin as well, but “018” evidently likes to keep the prying eyes of the public away from her birthing experiences.

“She goes just as far down in the pasture as she can go to have them,” said Bailey.

According to OSU Extension Educator Roger Williams, bovine twins are not a common occurrence. But it’s not always a desirable occurrence, either.

“It’s a genetically inherited trait,” he said. “But when one of the twins is male, and one is female, the female is called a ‘freemartin,’ and it can’t reproduce. They say, for sure, not to keep the heifers if one’s male and one’s female.”

In fact, Bailey said, two of her cow’s twin sets have been heifer/bull mixes, including the most recent pair. But since the gestation period of a cow is nine months, “018” was able to pop out two sets of twins in 2006 – December’s calves, and a pair born in January 2006 that were both heifers.

“We’re keeping those two heifers,” said Bailey. “Just to see what happens.”

But as unusual as a twin-producing cow may be, what’s even more rare is a 92-year-old woman who feeds almost 100 head of cattle every day – even in the bitter cold Cherokee County’s experiencing this week.

“She’s been running this farm since I was 3 years old,” said Joyce Luna, Bailey’s daughter. “Even before that, when she was a little girl, her dad would take her out to work because she worked harder than any of the boys.”

Bailey’s husband died in 1949, shortly after they finished building the house in which she still lives near Lost City. But Bailey continued to run a Grade-A dairy for years on the 140-acre ranch. She’s since passed ownership of the ranch to her kids, but still lives there and raises mixed-breed cattle – including the twin-producing cow.

“She raised four kids and ran the farm, and she’s still running it,” said Luna. “She said she was going to quit when she turned 75, but she didn’t. I asked her about it, and she said, ‘Well, sometimes I lie a little bit.’”

As Bailey drove her pickup truck through an ice-covered pasture, through a herd of cattle, in search of twins, she called a few of them out by number.

“Eighteen? Is that you out there, buddy?” she asked, then explained, “They used to all have names. Now they have numbers.”