Three's a happy crowd

What are the chances ... Lexi Harris, 4, on the Taieri dairy farm with very rare triplet dairy calves. Photo / Stephen Jaquiery

Holy cow - it's triplets.

Or in the case of a dairy heifer that calved on a Taieri dairy farm last week, it was a gaggle of girls. Or a handful of heifers.

The first-calver produced a very rare set of heifer triplets on the Miller family's farm at Maungatua.

Neither Andrew Miller nor his father Jim had ever encountered triplet calves in their farming careers.

Andrew was particularly amazed they had all survived and said they were now doing well in the calf-shed.

Clutha Vets veterinarian Tom Wallbank had never encountered triplets before and he reckoned the chances of it were "probably [one] in the hundreds of thousands".

Dairy cows were also less likely to have triplets than beef cows, he said.

Calving was going well throughout the Otago region and the weather was much better than the "horrendous" conditions last year.