Trimming Hooves?

all the steers at the oxen pull this past weekened were shoed, had the nicest looking hooves I have ever seen on any cattle before too, the herefords I use to work with had horrible hooves and during the summer they were rarely if ever in the barn.

If you are in Arizona ( which your profile says ), and you have a lot of dry gritty soil...the cow will do her own trims just wandering around the pasture I would imagine...

Hammer4 - sorry. This steer is in a 40x40 foot pen, not free range. Besides - our soil isn't as abrasive as one might think. I have pasture, bermuda pasture. Not all of Arizona is rocky, dry or gritty - okay - maybe the 'dry' part, lol.

Niki

Well, since we plan on keeping our Lady Ox for her full lifetime, we've had to plan for hoof care since day one.

We started handling her feet the day we got her, as well as working with her on cow riding and all sorts of basic handling.

At 14 months old, she has very good hooves but we are now doing light hoof planing and edge trimming so that she gets used to it. Since she'll be doing ox work, her hooves are her "safety shoes" and we want them in top notch condition for the next 20+ years.

We aren't having any problem with her accepting hoof care. If we go up to her and tap her leg, she shifts her weight so that we can lift up the hoof and handle it. She also lets us work on them when she's laying down chewing cud. She'll even come over when called (we call her name and wiggle our hands in chin scratching position) for a chin scratch, hoof handling, for us to climb up and sit on her, or to get harnessed up in her rolled bed sheet Lady Ox collar and harness.

I'm sure that if cattle haven't been handled, that it would be a chore to descend on them out of the blue and expect them to accept hoof care. But you can certainly train cattle to be as cooperative as any goat, horse, or dog if you put the time into it. Probably not cost or time effective if they are just a beefsteak on the hoof, but well worth the effort (and not very hard to do) if they will be used as a working animal long term.

I also get the impression that folks genneraly accept a lot less perfect hoof in cattle (and goats) than they'd accept in their most prized horse. We are usually appalled at what passes for "good" hooves in the goats, sheep and cattle we've seen at county fairs. Most of them have feet that may be perfectly fine for meat or even dairy animals, but are just not sufficiently cared for to ensure long term hoof health for a draft or working animal.

Lynda

Lynda -

I now have two heifer calves....one is a ???, lol, and the other is brown and white - larger than the first. They are drinking milk from a pail and the b/w calf was born the last day of May. Our hope is for family milk cows.

These calves are still fairly skittish, even with being grain fed by my son. We are quiet around them, but they barely tip your hand with their noses, and take steps back. We would like to halter train, and work with them, but aren't sure how to start. Being gentle and quiet, but seems like we are going to have to force the issue - which I didn't want to do. How do I get my hands on them to gentle them?

thanks;
Niki

Don't know if the recommendation to cull your one family cow for long hooves works very well. Culling one of 50 might work, but eliminating your whole herd kind of hurts. Especially if you spent two years raising your herd of one from a calf.

I can trim my cow by lifting her feet. I haven't handled her as much as I should, but I can do it. Fortunately, she is smaller - Jersey/Lowline angus cross. Don't know if I'd like doing a larger cow. It's a bit of work holding her hind legs up, and sometimes she struggles a bit. I try to do a little at a time - just keep a rasp and leather gloves where I milk her. She doesn't need it much in the summer when ground is dry and more abrasive. Winter with just snow, mud and soft bedding is the issue.

I am trying to get her calf used to handling and picking up feet. Best time is when calf's nursing - can do alot and she'll tolerate it then when hungry and going after the milk.

I'm no expert trainer of older calves or cows you're asking about. I assume to calm and gentle them just takes time and exposure and slowly getting closer and touching them more. And treats (carrots, grain) and feed to make it a positive experience.

If youll put a few landscape blocks around your water trough they will trim their own feet every time they drink. Or just pour some rough cement around it far enough out so when they drink all 4 feet are on the concrete. This will also help keep tehm from turning it into a mudhole LOL

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dezeeuwgoats -

We were only working with one, so that may have helped us a bit. If she wanted company, she had to get it from us, the dogs, or the goats.

Some of the things that worked well for us:

Before she was weaned she was kept in a fairly small area. She was only brought out of that area on halter.

We went in and petted her and brushed her quite a bit. Also handled her legs. At the start all of the work was about getting her used to no being afraid. We just did gentle things and it didn't matter what she did. We just kept doing that until she got confident that she wasn't making giant bulging "cow eyes" at us.

When she was little, every new thing and every change was first met with a comical look of alarm and big googly "cow eyes". Just doing lots of little low pressure things got her used to the fact that nothing new we did was going to hurt her of be scary. That has really paid off as she grew.

For first introduction to halter, we first set the halter on a stump in her pen so she could make cow eyes at it until she realized it wasn't something awful. Then we touched her with it until that was no big deal. Then we put it on and acted as if it wasn't there - we just went on to petting and foot touching and pretended the halter was just something normal.

Our goats have been a big help in training. Connie watches how they interacts with us and then copies them That's how she learned that the brush must be the best thing in the world and that humans are the best people to go to to get some affection.

For leading, we saw what Buddy the goat did to train her and copied it ourselves. No hard pulling, but no giving in and being soft on her. Just steady pressure on the lead until she followed, and if that didn't work veer off at another angle and steady pressure again. The angle switch was a good one to put her a bit off balance and make it hard for her to refuse to move.

We had to teach her that walking on a halter meant something good. We took short walks that ended in at a big patch of grass or brambles. She got a chin scratch and then got set loose to graze. We'd also do things like let the goats out to forage and then later take Connie out on halter to join up with them - so the reward was browse and herd company.

Once she was weaned she started living and foraging daily with the goats. We did get a bit of rebellion at times when we went up to her while she was grazing and tried to halter her up. She didn't want to stop eating and a couple of times tried to dodge us.

We fixed that by doing halter work later in the day so she would be more full and less hungry. Having two of us work with her so one could approach from each of the directions we knew she'd try to use as escape routes. Kept walks short and tried to make the VERY rewarding - like haltering her from free browsing back to the house and then giving her corn.

We also relied on a little yogurt cup of corn a lot as a training aid. Once she learned that the goats think corn is the best thing on the planet (except for the brush, of course) and that the cup rattle meant goodies at hand, she'd work for a bit of cup contents.

So much of our early training with her was just very short and fairly frequent walks. If she was distracted we'd be content to walk her just 20 feet and then make a big deal about what a good job she did.

We had to be very careful about how we trained in winter. Our animals browse and forage year round (we only went through 6 bales of hay total for 8 goats and a cow last year) and last winter she had to work hard to free range enough food to support her rate of growth. We worked for shorter periods and made sure it was on the heels of some good browse time. She was too young and growing too fast to have the mental capacity to work when genuinely hungry.

Some of the training we did in winter was to teach her that we might come up to her while she was grazing and not demand any work at all. We approached in a way to prevent escapes, petted her or gave her a treat, and then vanished as quickly as we arrived. That made us a whole lot more interesting to her! It's pretty good when the humans show up out of nowhere, scratch your ears, pick up your feet, give you a handful of corn and then leave without interrupting your important browsing work.

We've made choices along the way to go a bit slow with some things as long as we were developing a strong foundation of cooperation and trust. In the winter, she didn't need to hike the whole land on halter when she needed every possible grazing moment to meet her physical needs. In heavy fly season, we put her on a halter and have her stand steady while we zap bugs with one of these http://www.asseenontv.com/prod-pages/bug_zapper.html instead of demanding she perform a task while being bombed by insects.

She now even comes trotting up to us when she sees us bringing out the noisy bug zapper. The first few training sessions with it though, got big cow eye looks and a serious facial expression as she weighed new fear against her deep feelings of trust. Trust won. We started that as a two person job. We haltered her and I held the halter rope and scratched her chin while Pat lightly zapped a few flies. Within a few days it turned into a one person job, no halter needed, cow standing steady as a rock, and cow even coming from a distance when she sees the zapper.

Not sure if that's any help, but it is working for us. Most of it is just doing a little bit every day and keeping in mind we'd like to have her around for 20 - 30 years. Every little bit of instruction, boundary setting, task training, and trust history adds up.

Lynda