Advice Needed on Raising a Calf to Cow

[CollieFlowerWV]

Hi,
I'm new here and looking for advice on how to train a calf to later use as a milking cow. Some people gave me the advice as not to halter/lead train her and some say to do it. I'm a little confused and would like to get a few more opinions from more people. She is now two months old and we have had her since she was about three days old. Thanks,

[francismilker]

Whether you haltar break her or not, handle her and gentle her so much she'll think she's haltar trained. If she's going to be a family milk cow she needs to be as gentle as possible BEFORE the first milking rodeo! Rub her udder and gently massage her teats as often as you can to get her used to being handled in that area. As well, for the ones that advise you not to haltar break her, you might invite them over to help you with the first milking!lol

[Callieslamb]

Here is my experience. I had a heifer I raised from a bottle. Just never got around to halter training her. She's tame. You can touch her all over, etc. I sold her and the new owners picked her up today. Have you ever tried to push an 800 lb cow into a trailer?

I just bought a milk cow - also untrained to the halter. She is head shy- doesn't wantanything touching her head. Halter-trained cows will not mind if their heads are restrained. That is a BIG plus when you want to milk a cow, when she goes to a new place, or when you have to give medication.

My cow stands very nicely for me. She has never been a problem...but she COULD BE. She hates the stanchion and fought it every step of the way. I don't use it. She just stands there free as a bird while I milk her. I had the opportunity to give her some mastitis medication a couple of days ago.....I had never done that before. Fortunately, she stood very still for me.. BUT she COULD have been right over the top of me.

I have never seen the sense of halter training - until now. Your heifer is young - train her. It won't take that much work.

[Lannie]

Yes, halter train her. Then start feeding her in the stanchion, once she's eating hay and stuff. This is what I did with my first cow (she was a year old when I got her) and we had very minimal issues when it came time to milk. Her heifer calf has been handled since day one. I halter trained her, taught her to stand tied, handled and touched her all over, including her teeny little teats, right from the start. She just calved two weeks ago, and apart from the first couple of days when the hormones were raging (but that's normal for most cows) she's behaved perfectly. It's only been two weeks, and she milks like a pro.

Do as many things with her as possible that you think you might EVER need to do, and then she'll be used to it when the time comes.

~Lannie

[Apryl in ND]

Lannie, how did you go about halter training the yearling heifer? How long did it take her to get the idea? Any tips?

[Lannie]

We had to rope her and snub her to a post first. Then put the halter on, and a lead rope for her to drag. When she steps on it, it brings her up short and she learns to respect the halter. Make sure there's no knot at the end of the lead rope or it can get caught between her toes and then it's, shall we say, difficult to remove. I know this to be a true fact.

After she dragged the lead rope around for a day or so, I tied her to the snubbing post for a while, not long, but long enough that she'd quit fighting it. All this was done in a smaller pen, by the way, not in the big pasture. After a few days, I started leading her around in the pen, with my husband helping. He walked behind with a riding crop to tap with if she stopped, and I carried a can with some alfalfa pellets in it. It needed to be fun for her, and she LOVES those pellets. Pretty soon she was coming when I called her name. The whole process took probably a couple of weeks. I also spent what spare time I could, just sitting in the pen with her at first, because she was wild off the range and really was spooky of humans at the beginning. Now she's a back-pocket cow.

I'll be brutally honest here and comment that she leads just fine now as long as she wants to. If she doesn't want to, there's not much I can do about it, because she weighs in excess of 1,400 pounds now. But unless she's in a raging heat, she's a pretty good girl. I've had her in to the vet before for preg checks and such, and they were amazed that I was leading this huge cow around on a lead rope. They assume since she's half Hereford that she's not able to learn how to lead properly with a halter. Siwwy vet!

With calves, I put a halter on them (a very tiny baby halter) when they're just a couple of days old, and they get halter trained automatically when I'm calf sharing. I lock the calf up in the calf stall for a few hours, or overnight, then bring mom in to milk her, then bring baby out on a lead rope to jump-start the next letdown, then pull them off and back into the stall they go until I'm finished. When they're little, it's easy to pull them, and they, just like their mothers, get into a routine and after a week or so, all it takes is a tug and they come right off and bounce back into their stall. It's like a game, I guess.

The only time I had a problem with that was with the last steer calf, who decided he wanted milk more than he wanted to follow me on the lead rope, and when he got to be about 5 months old, he won one tug-of-war, so I weaned him. Prior to that, he'd been behaving fine. He's almost a year old now, and I can still put a lead rope on him and he follows me like a dog, but that's only because there's no milk involved. The early halter training works, though.

~Lannie

[bigmudder77]

yes lead her around it will make life pretty easy getting her to go in to where you milk her but be nice to her

unless you have head locks your gonna wanna be very careful when you first go to milk her and some even with headlocks its a huge pain to have her give the first milking

but we had an 8 year old jersey that use to be a show cow she was great i remember when i was like 12-13 we didnt have power and the milk man came already so no milk and i needed milk to cook something i was making so i went out in the pasture and she came up to me and i milked her no halter or any thing she just stood there and let me get a cup of milk out of her lol and out of 70-90 milking cows to have a couple that are really tame was always nice to have

[CollieFlowerWV]

Thank you all for the replys. I was leaning on doing the halter training, thanks. I thought that it wouldn't hurt anything and it might help. Any idea on how long to keep up the training. We do have quite a bit of acreage and I was going to let her out with the beef cows. Since the cows don't come in every day, I might not see her for a couple of days at a time. I wasn't sure when I should let her out with them. Thanks.

[Lannie]

If it were me, I'd probably spend a couple of weeks with her first. Teach her what her name is (unless she already knows it), give her treats for coming when you call her, make sure that she leads relatively well, etc. Then if you want to turn her in with the beef cattle, at least she's had a good foundation. Try to go see her whenever you can, and preferably take a treat with you, and see if you can get her to come to you while she's in with the rest of them. It might be kind of hard, because cattle are very social and she won't want to leave her buddies, but at least try to keep her "remembering" you and that you mean good things for her. Even if all you do is give her a scritch under the chin or behind the poll.

After she's bred, I'd bring her in and keep her in a smaller paddock for at least the last 3 months or so of her pregnancy. Then you can start feeding her in the milking stanchion (if you're going to have one, which I highly advise), and touching her, brushing her, spraying the flies off (if it's summer) and all the things you might do while milking. That way, she'll be accustomed to the expected routine when the time comes. Their hormones take over for a couple of days right after calving, and it's a stressful enough time for them without adding in a new routine. So try to have everything established well ahead of time. I started feeding my first heifer in the milking stanchion right from the time we brought her home (once she was released from the small pen, that is), and when it came time to milk her the first time, I had surprisingly little trouble with it. I did the same thing with her heifer calf, but starting about 6 months before she calved, and aside from some kicking the first day or two, I've had no real trouble with her, either. She was worried about her baby for about a week and would poop and/or pee in the stanchion during milking, but now she knows the baby is fine and doesn't do that anymore, either.

Cows love routine, so just try to establish a routine with her before she calves, and then enjoy the milk.

~Lannie