Cows and Horses

[hillbilly123]

I got a couple of holstein steers that I am fattening up for freezer beef, they are ~10 months old now. Up until now, I have been letting them stay with our sheep. Its time for the sheep to begin lambing, so I moved the cows to a different field with a couple of horses that we are boarding for a friend.

Now, these horses are old and cantankerous, and when the cows try to eat the horses bite at them and chase them off. So they are not getting along well.

It took all of 1 day for the cows to tear down the fence and get back in with the sheep.

I have not had any issues with them up to now. Should I be worried about the steers learning a new trick to get through the fences? I do not have allot of electric, just 4' woven wire fencing around the place.

[gone-a-milkin]

Horses are bossy and mean to cows generally, especially calves.

Your little steers are telling you that they do not want to be with those horses.
Since you are trying to raise these guys for meat, they need to be able to eat as much as they can.

I suppose it is slightly possible that the steers might figure out they can crash down any fence they want,
but they probably only wanted to get away from the horses and back to somewhere comfortable.

I have seen horses that would run cows through powerful electric fences.
Not *all* horses are bad with the cattle, of course, but they tend to guard the hay and not let anyone else have it.

For that reason alone I would not put those little steers out with the horses.

[Miss Kay]

They did what they had to do and hopefully it didn't start a bad habit. If things went well with the sheep up until now, I'd leave them there because they are not going to stay with the horses (as you've seen).

[haypoint]

Horses often pick on newcomers. Takes a week to adjust. Can you create two or three feeding locations, so the horses won't be able to "control" all the feed all the time?

[hillbilly123]

I tried a few different feeding spots, but the male horse always went to where they were eating and ran them off.

[opportunity]

My horses try to run the cows off the round bale that I rolled out now it's a whole bale so a huge area. The cows respect the horses and the horses always eat first I have had to put the horses with just the bulls so they don't pick on the cattle to much.

[Judy in IN]

I have cows, sheep, and horses also. The horses stay in a separate pasture with tramp shed, mostly for my blood pressure. Horses will always chase cattle away from food, as well as keep them out from shelter. That is extremely aggravating to me.

I have two barns available for shelter in the sheep pasture. I took pole barn screws and fastened a 1"x 6" board across the door of the barn where I feed the sheep. The board is too low for cattle to enter.The heifers are fed in the other barn. So far, my sheep have chosen to lamb inside the sheep pen, if I don't get them jugged first. There's no competition at the bunkers inside the sheep barn. They seem to share without problems at the outside feeder.

Otherwise, the heifers and sheep get along a LOT better than the horses and cattle would. The horses don't care for sheep either, if you're going in that direction.

[haypoint]

I have always run horses and cattle together. Whenever there is a new addition, or a returning member of the "family" there is trouble. it lasts a few days. It is known as establishing a peckiing order.
Once I unloaded three 400 pound calves into the 20 acre horse pastue. The horses went towards the calves and the calves. What great fun for the horses. AAfter 10 or 15 minutes of that nonsence, the horses got bored and left the cattle to settle down. Later, they tried the game again, this time the cattle got thru the fence and remained "at large" for nearly a week. Tried it again, but with one horse on pasture the rest in the barn. Gradually they got along. I must feed them grain in seperate locations, but they share the hay. When I added a new horse, the horses wanted to pester him, a young colt, so I put the colt in with the cattle and put the horses in a lot next to the barn. Gradually adding a horse to the pasture. My animals have lots of room and lots of food, so fighting over food isn't as much of an issue.

[Oakshire_Farm]

I guess it all depends on the horses??? I have 2 paddocks....... 1 has my stallion, his son the gelding, 4 jersey cows and a dexter bull and a llama. The other paddock has the arab pony gelding, a mini gelding, 1 jersey cow, 1 TOTALLY blind holstein, calves and sheep. There is 1 round bale in each pasture, everyone stands shoulder to shoulder to eat. I have never had any problems with bulling. I quite ofter move cows and calves back and forth between the groups. I just like to keep the kids ponies in a separate pasture than the big horses. So the kids can come and go with out me worrying about the big horses being silly.

But for the safety of your calves, I would say keep them separate from the horses