By RAY WYCHE

The odds were about 1 to 100,000 but Ransom Baby Cake got it just right.

Ransom Baby Cake, a registered quarter horse owned by Franky Ivey of the Macedonia Church community north of Cerro Gordo, gave birth to twin stud colts on the night of March 7, right on her due date, on the Ivey farm without a veterinarian in attendance.

Births of live twin horses occur less than 1 percent of the time, state agriculture officials in Raleigh said.

Ransom Ivey, the Waccamaw Academy eighth grader son of Franky Ivey and who tends the family’s horses while Franky Ivey is at work in Raleigh, said both colts are doing fine. The mare is very protective of her new twin sons, placing herself between her babies and visitors other than Ransom Ivey. The colts are trying out their spindly legs and nursing heartily, Ransom Ivey says.

The colts arrived sometime during the night, Ransom says. The family had no idea the mare was carrying twins.

“I was astonished when I went to the barn on the morning of March 9 and saw the twins,” he says.

Both colts are buckskin in color and almost identical in appearance, with one being slightly larger than his brother. One has a longer white “stocking” on a foreleg than the other and one has a larger white patch on his head.

The Iveys, who show and sell registered quarter horses, had Ransom Baby Cake artificially inseminated with sperm from a champion quarter horse from Michigan. The Iveys also rent their horses for trail rides and have donated horses to Boys and Girls Homes in Lake Waccamaw.

Three Columbus County veterinarians—Drs. Heidi Hart of Bolton, Tiffany Barnhill of Animal Hospital of South Columbus and retired W.C. Burns of Whiteville—said the birth of live twin horses is very rare and that standard procedure is to “reduce” one fetus that will be absorbed by the mare to ensure that the surviving colt will develop normally.

If the mare carries both colts to full term, chances are that one or both will be stillborn.