Wild New Cow Moms

In the over 30 years I have been farming, I have never seen cattle act the way this current batch of heifers is acting. I have raised dairy, beef, and a cross of the two, and never saw them try to bash or eat their young. I am glad mine are currently tied up in the barn or we’d have a lot of dead calves. I have seen them ignore their babies or favor one twin over the other and literally knock the one twin away, refusing to let it nurse, but this behavior is very strange. 

Our first heifer to calve, Stripe, squeezed it out, cleaned it up, easy-peasy. She wouldn’t let it nurse, which I have seen several times, but we took her in and milked her and fed it – no problem. She went by the stall every day (twice) and stopped and yelled at it for some reason (maybe wondering why it was there instead with her) but now just nods at it. That’s funny. 

Then Dot, our only red and white holstien, had a bull calf and we thought she was going to stomp it to death. Every time we put it near her she screamed as loud as she could and pawed at it and smacked it with her nose. She licked it sort of, but spent most of the time trying to bite it. She, at one point, grabbed its foot and started to throw it. I got it away from her and dried it myself in its own stall. She shut up immediately and pays it no attention when she goes to get milked.  She is just as calm as can be going to her stall and to the parlor and in her stall. You can do anything you need to without her kicking, except milk her. Then it is a rodeo. It has been a week and she still acts as if she doesn’t know what is going on. Go figure!

Cuddles, so named because of her demeanor, had a heifer and licked it a few times, but also screamed her head off at it. It was deafening. She tossed it around with her nose and tried to beat on it with her foot. I thought she was trying to get it into a better position to clean it, but no, she wanted to eat it. Another one I had to dry off and mother. She gives it a glance on her way to the parlor, but otherwise pays no attention. She milked like a dream for all of two days and now kicks at the milker; not anything like Dot, but has be tied up to get the job done all the same. I suspect her bag is so full she is in pain until some of milk goes down and then she settles down. I can dip her and she doesn’t even twitch an ear. 

This morning we got out to the barn just in time play catch with another heifer from…George Foreman. Heaven help us. She acted pretty much like the others. She went nuts and even tossed me into the wall across the feed aisle. I was trying to keep the calf in licking distance but she didn’t want it near her. Another one I had to clean up! We thought she’d tear the parlor apart, but she stood perfectly still and let us milk her. Hmmm.

I understand from the latest report that Legs, so named for her extremely long and straight legs which can reach you anywhere she wants to kick, is about to deliver her calf. I think I’ll need ear plugs and armor for this one.

Anyone know what the deal is with these cows? The cold maybe? It is awfully cold.

UPDATE:

Legs had a baby bull. She actually didn’t try to eat it and Dot, being in the stall next to her, actually helped clean it. It looked black at birth at my husband named it Shadow. Once he was dry we discovered he is actually brown! After selling the last bull calf, I discovered half-jersey calves, being on the small side, don’t do well at market, and for that reason declared I wouldn’t sell any more of them. We’ll just have to find room. Husband agrees. 

Oh, Legs milks without beating the crap out of anyone, unlike Dot.

 

Gosh those little calves are cute. I still need a picture of Shadow.

                    This is Petunia. I'll see if I can catch her standing up and not drinking a bottle.

                         Ghost! Her face is marked crooked just like her mom, George Foreman.

New Baby

Yesterday we got to the barn in time to see another calf was about to be born. At least we were in there for this one. Now, Stripe cow does yell as she goes by her baby Tessa, but she licked her clean and did all the nice cow mom stuff she was supposed to and was protective. She calls out for her calf and the calf returns the call from her stall down the barn. Gertrude just ignored hers completely and I was ‘mom’ until we sold him.

Dot, on the other hand, is the darnedest thing I ever saw, and people, I have been raising cattle a long time, as in, off and on for over thirty years. She was quietly dealing with her labor while we moved the ladies in and out of the parlor to milk. During the second round I noticed the feet heading out but she wasn’t done by the time we were. It was, however, completely out by the time we got the first half (4) back in their stalls, so we stopped what we were doing to deal with getting the calf up to mama so she could lick it clean. 

This important for a lot of reasons: 1) It cleans all the yuk off the calf and dries it. 2) It stimulates the calf to breath – like when they smack a human baby’s bottom to make it cry the fluid out of its lungs. 3) It warms the calf. 4) It stimulates the mama cow to finish the delivery process by expelling the afterbirth. If she doesn’t clean out, she’ll get an infection that costs a lot to clear up and it could interfere with her being able to breed back. 

What Dot Did

Dot sort of licked at her calf. We had to babysit her cleaning it to a point where my husband forgot we had cows still in the parlor waiting to be put back until I reminded him. We got them put up to much foolishness as they wanted to play with the new baby and we had to stop them. This being done, we were back to monitoring the cleaning process. We constantly had to push the calf back to his mother (it was a bull) and she would just scream at it. I’ve never seen a cow scream at her calf that way. It was like she was saying to it, “So you’re the reason for all my discomfort!” The reason we were monitoring her when we normally would have left her in peace? She kept trying to bite him. Seriously! She opened her mouth and almost took off an ear. She bit his neck. She went for his side. She had his foot in her mouth. She kept pawing at him with her front foot. We thought at first she was trying to get him into a position where she could get to him better, but she was knocking him out of the way even though her instinct told her to lick it clean. We made sure she did the licking part and she did most of it before she got too out of hand with him and we finally just took him away and finished cleaning him off ourselves. She calmed right down. Weird.

We took another round into the parlor even though she would be the only one to get milked so we could get the colostrum for the calf. There was no way she was going to let him nurse and she wouldn’t allow us to hand milk her. The calmest cow we had, even in training, went totally berserk when we actually tried to milk her. (Yup; had to hog tie her.) But, I got the colostrum and fed the poor little guy and made sure he had his blanket on him because he was shivering. It is cold up here! He ate well though.

Later, after the chores were finally finished, we sat across from the calves watching them. The new one was breathing funny and my husband thought he might have gotten pneumonia since he didn’t get the proper stimulation to get the fluid out of his lungs, but then I noticed how he had him tied up and jumped up just in time. His breathing got worse by the second and he was gurgling. I said something colorful and grabbed my pocket knife and cut the string free and started stimulating him to breath. My question to my husband was why does he always tie a slip knot on their necks? He didn’t think it was a problem the way he ties them. I had to inform him it was because I ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS, have to go back and either retie or start from scratch, the string he uses to tie them up because it tightens up on their neck and chokes them. He has just never seen it I guess. I had to teach him how to tie it so that it doesn’t slip and choke them anymore. We’ll see. The calf is fine and breathing right now. No meds needed. 

I won’t give the little guy a name. Bull calves are worth too much right now to keep him and we don’t have our calf facility set up yet. We’re using unused cow stalls for them until then and it isn’t that much space – only four stalls. We can fit 8 little ones in that, but once they start to grow they’ll need the stall to themselves. 

Are you getting a barn full of new calves?

 Our newest little guy to the barn. He is so darned cute; it's a shame I have to sell him.

 

Tessa photobombed him. 

Mom- Dot

Welcome Tessa

Yesterday we made it to the cattle auction towing Spanky. She needed a new home. Since my husband lost track of the auctioneer back in December, he ended up bringing home a cow that had been milking since April and still wasn't bred back. This is not normal for milking cows as they stop giving a decent volume of milk and she stopped just about all together shortly after we got her home. We thought we'd at least put some weight on her, but even though she could pack away the food, she just didn't gain weight. (Most people would love to do this!)

To market she went, but there was a sale too, with a lot of milking cows and several registered Holstiens. They must have had a lot of hair since they were outside in a freestall barn where it was cold because they shaved them down some. There was one little cow that they advertised as being a high producer with a low somatic cell count (that means she didn't have mastitis), but they did a poor job shaving her and she was some kind of thin, which means if she is a high producer then she puts her food into making milk, she was also taller in the back than the front which just made her look odd. Well, that didn't bother us! There were hardly any bids on her so my husband literally threw his hat in the ring. They weren't paying any attention to our area and he had to get their attention. We won the bid. Since she was running milk (because they didn't milk her that morning) he named her Squirt! She was actually used to being milked in a parlor, but apparently it was a different type than ours. Once she figured it out though, she was fine. Hooking her up is currently the challenge. Freestall cows aren't hooked in and don't wear collars unless they are being used to robot milk the cows. The robotic unit reads the tag on the collar or the ear to know whether to milk the cow or not. I hope she gets used to it soon, like before she dislocates my shoulder trying get her in place to hook up her collar.

We have been checking on our heifers who have been going through the parlor, albeit not getting milked. Stripe, the heifer who didn't want to come into the barn, settled right down once she was inside and except for a couple times trying to get her to her stall, she actually did better than the others. Last night we decided she might not make until her due date February 9th. We put a grate behind her just in case. This morning we were greeted with a tiny heifer calf she had delivered some time before we got in there. She accepted it once we got the slippery little girl over to her. The poor calf just wanted her mommy but got between Stripe and George Foreman. George kept kicking her. (Farmer growls audibly at George.) Once she was cleaned up and Stripe was in the parlor getting milked (without a single kick or complaint either) we moved the calf to her own stall and fed her. She has some appetite!

Meet Tessa! I don't know why I named her that; I just took one at her and the name popped into my head.