Mere hours after Albertans welcomed in the new year with shouts of, “Three, two, one,” Lucky 7 Cattle Co. owner Stacey Simpson was incredulously counting upward: “One, two, three?”
Simpson, a purebred Red and Black Angus cattle farmer outside of Sedgewick, Alta., a town about 150 kilometres southeast of Edmonton, said she wasn’t surprised her five-year-old heifer Dukey was showing signs of labour three hours into 2026.
But what did catch her off guard was that Dukey’s symptoms continued, even after birthing two calves.
“Just on my way out of the maternity pen, my dad looked at me and said, ‘I think you better try again,’” Simpson told CBC News. “I kind of rolled my eyes and I’m like, ‘OK, we’ll check.’
“Sure enough, I’m shoulder-deep in this cow and I can just feel the tips on the feet on the third calf coming.
“I’m like, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’”
Dukey’s triplets, dubbed Carla, Darla and Marla, were born healthy, an outcome Simpson and her family are grateful for. The odds are already long for triplet calves to be born, and it’s even more rare for them to survive.
Incredibly, Carla, Darla and Marla are not Lucky 7’s first set of thriving triplets.
Dukey’s own mother calved the farm’s first trio only last year. Hewey, Dewey and Louie are all still part of the Lucky 7 herd and, according to Simpson, their birth was even more remarkable.
“All three of those calves presented correctly on delivery, so she probably could have had all three of those calves unassisted.”
Simpson’s sister Kylie, who is also a Lucky 7 farmer, noted they only “run 35 cows.”
“The odds of it happening are so slim, period. But to have it happen twice is mind-blowing,” she said.
Unlike their counterparts, the future of Carla, Darla and Marla — and their genes — at Lucky 7 Cattle Co. is still to be decided; they may be kept for breeding or sold to the highest bidder.
But in the meantime, Stacey Simpson said she is happy to keep milking the novelty of such a rare occurrence. A video posted to Lucky 7 Cattle Co.’s Facebook page, showing the mother and her calves, had garnered almost two million views as of Thursday, as well as comments from people who live on other continents.
“We’ll probably keep up with Marla, Carla and Darla throughout the year just because we’ve gained a huge social media following from it,” Simpson said.
