weaning cows and calves

Weaning is much the same for calves as it is for human babies when mum decides it’s time to no longer feed from breast or bottle. Or when it comes time to give up that dreaded dummy! (Oh boy, I can I remember that.)

For calves, being ‘weaned’ means having them in the yards for about four or five days, depending on how long it takes them to settle, become used to me, as I plod around the yards, singing, and talking to them and mostly, how long it takes them to stop wanting their mum. Once we split the cow and calf unit, we don’t want them to get mixed up together again because all of the hard work we’ve already done will be wasted.

So for the time they are in the yards, we feed them hay and they have as much water as they need.

weaned calves

By the time they’re ready to head out into the paddock, they’re calm, they’re not frightened of people (because we give them what they need, hay and water) and they’re well on the way to making gorgeous cows, who will have lovely calves.

It’s tiring be a calf! After running and playing, eating and drinking, it’s time to have a nap when the tractor appears!

While mum eats until her heart (or stomach) is content, the calves often take the opportunity to have a quick nap, knowing they are in among the safely of the herd.

They snuggle down in to the hay until they are comfortable and sleep soundly until the cows start to move off to get a drink. Often for a couple of hours at a time.

It’s alway much nicer, if when they’re sleeping, the sun is shining warmly!

At the moment all the bulls are heading off on their annual visit to the girls! They’ll see who’s still there from last year and check out any new ones.

This bloke is heading to a paddock with a some girls eagerly awaiting his arrival.

We’ve been seeing the cows ‘bulling’ recently (which means, in farm-speak, cycling – ready to get pregnant,) so it’s time to send the fella’s into the clutches of some wanton women!

They stay in for about six weeks. Later we’ll check to see who’s pregnant and who’s not …

Six weeks of glory, then the rest of the year celibate! Who’d be a bull?

See that red spot? Its my daughter off walking Rocket. I dropped her at the front of this paddock to walk up through the middle. It gives both her and Rocket time to explore, check out the insects that are about, or talk to the animals.

The cows are checking out what they’re both up to, but they won’t harm her at all. In fact they’re pretty used to people walking through their paddocks!

The tales she tells when she arrives home, shows that she has an over-active imagination, much like her mum’s!

This is the time of year for babies! It’s a gorgeous time, watching them take their first steps then within a half an hour or so being able to run.

Calves in particular are beautiful with their liquid brown eyes and long eyelashes. I can tell you that cattle take the cake for long eyelashes! We missed out big time!

Calves concentrate so hard, while drinking,often when you drive past and they get a fright, they pull away from the udder and have milk all around their mouth and nose (just like our babies do when they’ve been drinking milo) and games they play with each other just bring a smile to your face! Calf chasey is a classic.

Cows often place their calves in a crèche, leaving one mum behind while the others go out to feed. It’s like a big day-care!

This little fella is our first calf of the season, so mum hasn’t got anyone else to leave him with. She placed him in a corner surrounded by long grass – I had to look hard to find him – and somehow, he knows not to shift until she comes back to get him, so he’ll happily sleep in the sun until it’s feed time.

It’s hard to imagine he’ll grow into a big 5-600kg beast at this age!

These are the cows that Hayden and I’ve been feeding. There is nothing better than seeing your stock grab huge mouthfuls of hay and slowly chopping away, their eyes half shut. It’s the look of contentment!

It’s also a great way to know the hay you’ve made, is good, sweet hay that the stock will eat.

Sometimes, if there has been heaps of rain while making the hay, the moisture can effect the quality of hay, but by the way these girls are hoeing in, looks like it’s good hay!

Remember back at the beginning of December we were spreading fertiliser on our sorghum crop and I said it was going to grow fast and furiously? Well, it did!

We’ve put our weaned calves onto it and some of the plants are eight foot tall! Can you see the cattle in amongst it? It must be like us going into a chocolate factory – we wouldn’t know where to start eating! I think the calves must feel like this!

The best thing about this crop is that it can be eaten down, the stock taken out of the paddock and we let the sorghum re-grow.

Then we can put stock back in again! So throughout the summer there will always be some green feed.

Sexy legs hey? You only get legs like these when you’re sloshing through ankle deep muddy cattle yards like Anthony and I have been this week!

Mud-encrusted legs feel really weird when it’s dry, although I have heard that mud is good for the complexion … I wonder if that includes cattle poo and wee all mixed in?

Anyway, we were tagging our stud calves. As a registered Angus Stud we need to be able to identify the dam (mum) and sire (dad) of each calf.

Those yellow tags help with that as every animal has its own number that is recorded on a computer program.

I’ve written about this process in Red Dust so hopefully now you’ll be able to visualise it when you read about it!