any cattle people out there!!!

[roocrazy]

Longhorns&Chickens :

I love all the cows!! Here is some of our herd. We have about 30 head of Texas Longhorns.
This is our 2 year old bull, Rio's Final Answer. He was 60" tip to tip at this age. He was 2nd last year at the Horn Showcase for his age class.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/MAY82011017-Copy.jpg
This is our newest herd sire LC 585 War Bonnet. He will be going to a satellite measurement on Saturday, wish us luck. Actually he has a pretty good chance, he is growing really well. He is a 1 and 1/2 years old. He is a beautiful, and very well mannered boy. That is his girlfriend Hannah next to him, she is 2 years old.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/9-1068.jpg
This is Fern, she is a 6 yr old cow. She is one of my pets, and just so you all know she loves glazed donuts.

http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/024.jpg
This is Jessy and her first calf! Longhorns have really small calves, and are great for first time mommas
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/may2022.jpg
This a new cow to our herd. Sugar is a 3 year old, and a nice girl.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/8-3024.jpg
This is the first cow born on our farm.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/july9015.jpg
And last but not least the Queen of our longhorn herd: Emperoress. Whose horns are about 70" tip to tip at 11 years old, and the mother of the heifer before this.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/Emperoress.jpg

I had better stop now, I have soo many cow pics and I love to talk longhorns!! I love all cows, so keep the pics coming!

youre longhorns are awesome.

 

[OtterCreekRanch]

Quote:
The key is find a bull known to have small calves that begin to grow quickly after birth. Our herd sire that we just recently sold produced calves 65-75 lb range (largest calf he ever had was 81 lbs) but their weaning weights were consistently 700 lbs+.

For calving ease you really have to look at more than just the bull's birth weight itself. This is where research comes into play. From a few minutes of looking I am finding Rocky Balboa had a small birth weight himself, but doesn't necessarily produce small calves. This could mean he was born a bit early and therefore was just small himself, but it could also mean that the heifers he was bred to that produced these large calves were over fed during pregnancy. That is why I am stressing that you need to look at track records along with the bull's birth weight and EPD's.

Here is a quote from another forum I frequent regarding calves out of Rocky Balboa:

Couple of years ago we bred 3 heifers to Rocky Balboa. Only 2 stuck (thankfully) and both heifers had 95-100 lbs calves. One heifer and one bull. Both nice calves but one was a hard pull and after that we packed the other up and took her straight to the vet for the requisite C-section. One heifer was a commercial heifer and one was a Mossy Oak/Moody Blues. Again, I would say that they were both nice calves - we did keep the heifer for a replacement- but I would never, ever use him on first calf heifers.

He does not have EPD's because he is a cross bred. Only purebred animals have EPD's.

Almost all of the pictures you see of bulls were they are groomed up real pretty are taken before they are a year old. It is all in the marketing. Once they are put out to pasture for breeding they will lose all of that hair and start to look more bully and "uglier". That is why they take the pictures of the bulls while that are young and have been kept penned up, on feed, and groomed every day. Truth is, a lot of people who chose semen sires do so based on how nice they look in that one little picture. If they seen what the bull looked like as a 3-4 year old a lot of people wouldn't use them. If you have ever watched the videos of the Denver display bulls out being walked you will see how small and young they really are even though in the pictures a lot of them look like mature bulls. Most of them really are just calves.​

 

[Miss Lydia]

that you cattle people might like this... http://www.flixxy.com/cows-playing-with-rc-car.htm

 

[danischi24]

I put that on my Facebook 3 days ago

 

[Cowgirl71]

Quote:
No, she miscarried, again.

Does anyone want a beautiful, sweet, easy-keeping, adorable, pet cow? She'd be great for keeping the grass mowed while being a beautiful lawn ornament...

 

[Cowgirl71]

I went and looked at a Jersey bull today. We have two Jersey cows who are in search of a short term relationship with a cute Jersey bull, LOL. But anyway, the guy also has a Jersey/Brahma cross heifer for sale. She is SO pretty and unique! Picture an animal with a pretty head, big Jersey eyes, long Brahma ears, and a pretty grey roan color, with a black and white switch and a gold-ish colored poll. And did I mention she's a sweetheart?

I'm thinking about buying her, kind of as a replacement for Purdy...

Tomorrow I'm going to southwest Missouri to pick up a bred Jersey heifer that I picked out a couple weeks ago. She's gonna be my project this fall/winter. She was raised on a dairy, so she's calm, but not people friendly. Somehow I've got to docile her and get her trained for milking before February when she's due to have an adorable Jersey-sired calf! I've never broken in heifers to milking before except for "Lizzy," who just calved last month. I raised her on a bottle though, she was my baby, so it was a piece of cake training her.

 

[LotsaChicken]

We have a four year old heritage bred Jersey cow that was a commercial dairy cull. She is small and didn't produce what the big holsteins would, so they put the word out at our local feed store that she was for sale. They are trying to get switched over to all Holsteins eventually. You can tell the difference in that Jersey milk from Holsteins, especially, but even Brown Swiss. My neighbors have a swiss and I get double the cream. She is a nice little cow that quickly took to hand milking. We've had her for about a year and get 3 gallons a day. Half of which goes to us and the other half to the pigs. She'll pick up more after she freshens. She had been open for a year and a half. I just bred her in August to a pretty young Jersey bull, so she should calve in the Spring. We haven't done a preg check yet, but I feel sure she took. She usually has obvious signs of heat and we've seen none. We're praying for a heifer this spring!

This is the only picture I have of Honey on this computer..it was taken right after we brought her home. We removed the tags right away. I didn't take any pictures of her body because her condition wasn't great and she was positively filthy. The cows stand around in a holding pen waiting for a few hours for their turn to be milked. When we picked Honey up there had been a hard rain and they were standing in mud, manure and muck literally upto their bellies. You can imagine what the ground is like in a small pen that 100, or more, cows stand around in for hours, twice a day. The workers had to wear waders and bibs to stay halfway dry. It was NASTY. I've visited twice since and it is always nasty, but was especially bad that day. There is no way to keep the herd mastatis free in that kind of environment, but since the milk is pasteurized, it is acceptable. Those infections aren't dangerous to people, just painful to the cows. The clots are all filtered out and the milk is heated until safe, but it is some kind of nasty to think of drinking milk that has pus in it, whether it makes you sick, or not.

This is the neighboring bull that we were lucky enough to get to borrow to breed with Honey:

 

[LotsaChicken]

Quote:
You'll be suprised how easy it will be to train her. It was a DISASTER the first couple of milkings with our commercial raised dairy cow. We tried using a stachion when we brought Honey home. It had the piece at the top to lock her head in. We thought we wouldn't be able to manage, but then we though about how the dairy was set up. The dairy just had her free standing in a stall, feed on a platform in front of her and a butt chain behind. We took out the set up we had. Dh build a stall out of 2x4's...not completely enclosed. The side swings out and then the back swings open. So she walks in the stall to the feed, I push the side in and lock her in from behind..simulating the butt chain, but with more substance. Then I have the side built out of 2x4s between me and her. I found a pic, but it's hard to see exactly what I mean (don't yell at me for milking into galvenized..that's the pig's milking

). Oh, and it's not me in the picture milking. One of the area teens wanted to try her hand at it..turns out her hand didn't like it so much

.

If you want to see more of our set up I can take some pics tommorow. A neighbor got a cow from the same dairy and he has had her months. He still has problems milking her, but insist on chaining her during milking and doesn't put anything behind her. Honey tests the whole last half of milking to see if there is resistance still behind her. That was always her cue that milking time was done..the butt chain would come off.

 

[LotsaChicken]

Longhorns&Chickens :

I love all the cows!! Here is some of our herd. We have about 30 head of Texas Longhorns.
This is our 2 year old bull, Rio's Final Answer. He was 60" tip to tip at this age. He was 2nd last year at the Horn Showcase for his age class.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/MAY82011017-Copy.jpg
This is our newest herd sire LC 585 War Bonnet. He will be going to a satellite measurement on Saturday, wish us luck. Actually he has a pretty good chance, he is growing really well. He is a 1 and 1/2 years old. He is a beautiful, and very well mannered boy. That is his girlfriend Hannah next to him, she is 2 years old.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/9-1068.jpg
This is Fern, she is a 6 yr old cow. She is one of my pets, and just so you all know she loves glazed donuts.

http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/024.jpg
This is Jessy and her first calf! Longhorns have really small calves, and are great for first time mommas
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/may2022.jpg
This a new cow to our herd. Sugar is a 3 year old, and a nice girl.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/8-3024.jpg
This is the first cow born on our farm.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/july9015.jpg
And last but not least the Queen of our longhorn herd: Emperoress. Whose horns are about 70" tip to tip at 11 years old, and the mother of the heifer before this.
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff423/longhorns-chickens/Emperoress.jpg

I had better stop now, I have soo many cow pics and I love to talk longhorns!! I love all cows, so keep the pics coming!

Those longhorns are beautiful!! I do wonder how the heck do you handle them??? I've been told that longhorns tend to be gentle and I know you don't have to handle them daily like we do our dairy cow, but you still have to sometimes. Our cow is as gentle and friendly as a pet dog, but somedays when she is feeling her oats she'll run at us just playing. Other times I'll be working on a fence, or filling waters and she'll sneak up behind me and start rubbing her face up and down me. If one of those did that they'd prick your liver!​

 

[Longhorns&Chickens]

Quote:
Thanks!! Our longhorns are very gentle! Several will eat out of your hand, but yes you do have to watch out for horns. The cows do know where the ends are and most of the time they are careful not to whack you! They are very easy to work with and handle, generally if we buy one that winds up having a bad disposition they don't stay. I don't like the hot-headed ones or the moody ones, some of that is genetic and I don't want to deal with it! My cows are gentle enough that my 6 year old son and I weaned all 8 calves by our selves, and we did it in about a half an hour!! I give them all the vaccines and wormers my self. If we have a lot of things to do with them my hubby helps, sometimes the measuring takes two people to reach both horns

There are also a lot of great products available for horned animals that does make life a little easier with horns. On a funny side note, we took one of our bulls to a measuring competion, and after it was all said and done, my hubby was getting ready to catch the bull and load him, when one of the other guys asked if he needed any help and the hubby goes "no I'll get the bull its time to go home" and low and behold that silly bull walked up to the gate and was waiting for him. My hubby opened the gate and the bull walked right on the trailer! That bull was soo ready to go home! Longhorns are a hoot!