“These are the times that try men's souls.” | I've seen it more in my Black Angus heifers, but also in Reds as well. I tend to think it's more of a hormone thing. In a way it's nice to have a cow aggressive to clean a calf up and get it on it's feet if the weather is cold and wet. Usually when the calf gets some of the mothers milk though their system the heifer will quit it. However I've had one heifer try and kill her calf one year. I pulled calf and grafted him on another heifer. I kept the crazy heifer another year, I personally kept her at home to watch, she did the exact same thing the following year. She then got a ride to town the next day.
So I really don't know if its more related to hormones, breeding, handling of cattle in a lower stress environment. We have been really trying to lower stress when working first calf heifers. Throwing hotshots away, flags, etc. trying to work them slow and quiet. But I do know some of its breeding, genetics. My very first set of cows I bought (10 head) were the nicest cows to be around, but when they calved, they became aggressive in cleaning their calves up. Trying to get calf on their feet, even to the point of chewing the calf's tail off! I had three of those cows that would eat the tails right off their calf's. I kept heifers out of those cows, a couple of them did the same thing. They would even get aggressive and eat a tail off another cows calf in the herd. I had never see anything like it. It was a joke when people looked at those cows in my herd with bobbed tails, I told them they were better breeders with tails off. I was able to breed that out of them. Never saw it again in my cow herd.
Those aggressive cows I had were before I used some EXT in our herd, I had some of that breeding. I will agree N Bar Emulation EXT was hot. I cussed the heck out of it. Life was too short to deal with that. |
Angus heifers “beating” calf instinct
