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Tennessee breeder hits jackpot second time with twin colts

By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

MONROE, Tenn. — His fictional boxing namesake was known for a one-two punch that movie audiences cheered through many sequels, but Rocky the donkey is known more for his “two-two” impact.

This Rocky defied a different kind of long odds, siring two sets of twin mule colts on the same mare, all four of which survived their births. The babies’ mother – who, admittedly, did most of the work – is Sugar, a 14-year-old mare owned by Tennessee breeder Bruce Looper.

Three years ago, Sugar struggled to deliver Cleston and Christine, both of whom were backwards in the birth canal, according to Vic Upchurch, technician and stepson to Albany, Ky., veterinarian Dr. C.R. Daily. It was an exhausting birth, and considering only one in 2,000 equine pregnancies results in living twins anyway, it was doubly miraculous.

One night in mid-May, Daily and Upchurch were called to Looper’s farm, about 20 miles from Daily’s practice, to assist in another of Sugar’s births. Since she was uneasy and already producing milk, Daily induced labor, and delivered a healthy girl.

But something was odd with Sugar while the vet was clearing the afterbirth, Looper explained.

“He reached up in there, looked straight at me, stared … and said, ‘You aren’t going to believe this,’” Looper recalled. “’We’ve got another one up there.’”

At 7 a.m., Looper’s longtime neighbor, Trish Iles, answered her phone. “Guess what we got again?” was the first thing she heard.
Like their older brother and sister, the two-month-old Bruce and Bernice are named for Looper and his fraternal twin sister, Christine Bernice, who died five years ago. He kept Cleston and Christine for more than a year before selling them to a Tennessee buyer, who in turn sold them to Amish owners in Indiana. At this point, Looper doesn’t know where the first twins are.

If one surviving set of twin mules is unusual, the odds of two sets from the same parents must be astounding; in fact, they are 1:5,000, according to Dr. Fred Hopkins of the University of Tennessee. He estimated the odds three years ago for twins, and recently sent updated figures to Looper on his second set.
“That’s just not something you see,” Upchurch said of expecting more twins from Sugar and Rocky. While the possibility was in the back of his and Daily’s minds on the trip to the farm, “still, you can’t expect twin colts. You just can’t expect that, or to get both alive.”

“The only thing I care about is she has a good, healthy baby that’s alive,” Looper opined.

Three years ago, he and a neighbor worked with the first set of twins to show them off at the local county fair. At 67 – now 15 years past his open-heart surgery and recovery – he’d like to be able to take Bruce and Bernice to the fair, but with his neighbor working elsewhere now and Looper’s own health declining, he’s not sure if he can manage the twins alone.

“You know how pups play?” he said one morning last week. “I was just down there feeding them a few minutes earlier, and that’s how they are.” Not to mention, Sugar is even more protective this time, when it comes to humans near her colts.

Iles, who is more tech-savvy than her neighbor, is helping him publicize the twin birth, by communicating with newspapers and other media outlets by computer. They’ve also been in touch with Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and Guinness World Records publishers to gauge their interest. She said their researchers are checking records and promise to get back with them soon.

“He wanted to make sure they got up old enough and lived long enough” before calling around, Iles said.

Sadly, there was reason for the Loopers to hold their breath. Since 2005, Sugar had gotten pregnant one other time from Rocky, with a single colt, which died only two days after its birth.

As for whether the mare and jack (which Looper bought from his owner after the first twin birth, to put to Sugar and two other mares) are likely to produce a third set of twins … it depends largely on what Looper hears back from Ripley’s and Guinness.

He sold the first set of twins because he needed the money and because that’s what he’s done for almost two decades: Breed mules. He explained they’re easier to market because they are intelligent and more surefooted than most horses.

If Sugar and her colts have set some sort of world record, their monetary value might be high enough to tempt Looper to sell them.

“We’d hate to get rid of her,” he said. “She’s a good mare.”

If he doesn’t sell them, and Sugar’s next conception is a third-time charm, Looper laughingly admitted he’s run dry of sibling names and would probably go with Sue and Ronald – his wife’s and son’s names – for a female-male pair.

7/2/2008