Each school of thought has its place. If you’re calving in freezing cold or wet weather, with plenty of mud around, it’s probably a good idea to get right out there and dip the calf’s navel and make sure it gets quickly on its feet and starts nursing. If you’ve had problems in the past with illness in calves, the extra immune protection from early vaccination may be of real benefit. Putting an ear tag on right away makes it easy to identify cow-calf pairs, especially in a larger herd, and to track which cows are producing the best calves.
If you’re calving on green grass in warm weather and don’t have a history of calf illness, a calf will usually do just fine without the navel dip or the early vaccination. This saves the calf from the stress of being handled when it’s fresh out of the womb, and giving bull calves a few weeks before castration won’t hurt them a bit.
Castration
Nobody likes castrating male calves. But the fact of the matter is that many more bull calves are born than will ever be used as breeding animals, and keeping extra bulls around makes no sense if you’re interested in calm, easy-to-handle cattle that aren’t sexually frustrated and aren’t focused on heifers instead of on gaining weight. Get your bull calves castrated before they’re four months old. The younger they are when you do it, the easier it is on them and on you.
There are three ways to castrate bull calves; the recommended method is knife castration. It’s the bloodiest, quickest, and surest way to get the job done. The best, most effective, and safest way to learn how to perform the procedure is to watch a veterinarian or an experienced owner do it more than once.
Here is description of how knife castration is performed. Get the calf on his side and tie his legs. Have a helper sit on the calf to hold him down or put the calf in the headgate and have your helper grab the tail at the base and hold it straight up in the air. (Although when done properly, tailing makes it impossible for the animal to kick, I still like to work from the side, just in case.) Grab the scrotal sac in one hand and, with a very sharp knife, cut off the bottom third. Put the knife aside and encircle the top of the sack with one hand and squeeze until the testicles appear through the opening you’ve just made. Using your other hand, grab one testicle at a time and pull it away until the connecting tissue and blood vessels break. You can cut these tissues and vessels, but pulling is better because it contracts them and reduces the bleeding. Then apologize to the calf and let him go seek the comfort of his mother.
The other two castration methods are acceptable, although you may lose a little money at the auction barn, and there’s a greater risk of an incomplete castration. One method involves the use of an elastrator, a plier-like device that puts a rubber band around the top of the testicles, shutting off the blood supply. The scrotal sac withers and eventually falls off. The other method employs an emasculatome, also similar in appearance to small pliers, which is used to crush the arteries and the cords that deliver sperm from where it’s manufactured in the testicles to where it’s stored in the seminal vesicles. Because these methods run a high risk of incomplete castration, a rapidly increasing number of auction-barn buyers and feedlots pay a lower price for cattle castrated using either of these methods. A bull calf that still has a working testicle is still half a bull and is called a stag. That’s what you get when the rubber band slips or you miss a spermatic cord with the crusher.
Dehorning
If you’re going to dehorn, do it as soon as the horn buds appear. This is best done with an electric dehorner, which is held on the horn bud until it’s burned to a crisp. The process is highly painful for the calf, much worse than castration. I strongly recommend having your veterinarian do this or getting your vet to teach you how to do this properly because if the growth ring isn’t completely destroyed, your calf will grow misshapen horns. If you have polled, or naturally hornless, cattle, you won’t have to deal with this chore at all.
| ADVICE FROM THE FARM Birds, Bees, and After We run the bull year-round with the cows. We start with a new bull and turn it out with the cows in late August or early September. Each year, the calving date is moved up because the bull is with the cows and heifers year-round. Then, in the fall of the third year, we sell the bull and don’t buy a new one until the following fall. The calving date is back to late spring and early summer, and we start over again, moving the calving date back. —Mike Hanley Everyone knows that bulls are dangerous and that a mother cow will protect its calf, but no one told me about heifers in heat. I was in the barnyard one day making a minor fence repair when some of the heifers wandered over to see what I was doing. This is pretty normal, so I said hello and went on with my work. As I turned away, a big heifer that must have been going into heat tried to mount me. If I had been just a little closer to the fence, I would’ve been squashed against it. As it was, I was knocked down but was able to scramble away. So don’t turn your back on a bull or a heifer! —Ann Hansen We calve late now, in May. You have to be either ahead of the mud or behind it—if the cows drop the calves in 6 inches of mud, they’re wet and cold. —Rudy Erickson The rare times a cow needs help calving, we put the cow in the corral and also put in a round bale and dig out the end of the bale for the calf. The cow and calf have shelter with the bale, plus feed from the bale, easy access to the headgate, and the water tank in the corral. —Mike Hanley A new mother is very unpredictable. The cow will chase anything, including you and the dog, so never turn your back. —JoAnn Pipkorn When a cow has a calf, she can be very protective. It’s not the time to be sending a ten-year-old child to check what kind of calf it is. We had a cow that was just nuts when it calved every year; after three calves, we shipped it because we couldn’t handle it. —Rudy Erickson |
Weaning Calves
Weaning involves separating the cows from the calves so the calves can’t nurse anymore and the cows’ udders dry up, giving them a rest and a chance to regain a little weight before calving again. Weaning is the most stressful thing that ever happens to a calf, and it’s hard on the cows, too. Make it as gentle as possible.
The first rule is not to wean by loading the calves onto a truck and sending them off to the auction barn or feedlot. Although this method is still common, it inevitably results in a lot of sick, and a few dead, calves. Consequently, buyers have learned to pay less for “truck-weaned” calves.
With a small herd on a small farm, it’s generally impractical to separate cows and calves by enough distance that they won’t be able to hear each other bawling during weaning. And they will bawl. It may take as long as three days and nights of steady noise before they either get tired of it or get too hoarse to go on. There’s nothing much you can do about it.
The most practical method for the small operator, which also tends to minimize the noise, is called “fence line” weaning. This involves splitting the cows from the calves and then putting the calves back into their familiar pasture and the cows in an adjacent pasture. This at least gives them the comfort of seeing each other, even if the calves can’t nurse. If you do this, be aware that a single-wire electric fence will not keep the two groups apart. They need to be on either side of a sturdy, perimeter-type fence, and it doesn’t hurt to have an electric wire as reinforcement. You’ll also need to set up a separate water tank and a separate salt and mineral feeder for the calves. There will still be an amazing amount of noise, but the noise doesn’t seem to last as long with this method.
Alternatively, you can move the calves into a pen with plenty of hay and water and put the cows back on pasture. The calves may take a little longer to settle down than if they were in their familiar pasture, but they eventually will. If you use this approach, remember that calves should not go directly from pasture to hay. Instead, gradually introduce hay into their diet well before weaning to allow their digestive systems