COWS!

[Western Chick]

On a rare occasion you'll get a polled holstein...meaning it naturally has no horns.

Otherwise, get out the horn cutter!

 

[Riocotesei]

Oh wow, I don't know much about cows then.

lol
The black and white shows no sign of growing horns and he's 2 weeks older than the brown. Maybe he's polled? I dont think I want the brown and white one to have horns, cause we plan on maybe keeping him.

 

[Farmer Kitty]

Quote:
Come on over and check out Backyardcows.com. There are a lot of informational threads and we are always willing to answer questions.

 

[kstaven]

Quote:
We use milk replacer. But I personally cannot understand why you would not take advantage of that first few days milk that is not salable anyways. A few minutes with a belly milker (surge etc..) can save you a lot of money and issues with calf scours in those first few weeks.

As far as runty goes, I have to say I have seen it. All milk replacers are not created equally. There are some really cheap ones available out there and calves do not thrive on it the same way. Buying second rate replacer costs you far more in the end.

 

[Farmer Kitty]

How true kstaven!

 

[Cara]

Quote:
We use milk replacer. But I personally cannot understand why you would not take advantage of that first few days milk that is not salable anyways. A few minutes with a belly milker (surge etc..) can save you a lot of money and issues with calf scours in those first few weeks.

As far as runty goes, I have to say I have seen it. All milk replacers are not created equally. There are some really cheap ones available out there and calves do not thrive on it the same way. Buying second rate replacer costs you far more in the end.

The key difference in our situation is that orphaned calves, or those with sick mommas, may not be seen or noticed for a couple of days. The cattle are all out on the range, and pretty wild, so illness isn't apparent early on. Being off milk for just that time affects them for the rest of their life.

 

[FarmerChick]

We use milk replacer. But I personally cannot understand why you would not take advantage of that first few days milk that is not salable anyways.


***Barb does....they milk the cows and use those buckets wtih the giant nipple....I have fed many of the calves with her while she was working.

I guess I didn't type that. I was saying that she does use replacer for them to grow from day 1---well day 4???--LOL---I am not sure and her cows are surely never runty.

I lost track of what I wrote...LOL