• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Calf catcher

Help Support Ranchers.net:

The sugar things makes sense. It would stem back to the fertility on the soil that the feed was grown on. Another reason to consider cutting your hay at the time of day when the sugar content is highest in the plant.
 
Pairinapulvarizingposition.jpg

Pair in a pulvarizing position

Thish cow was shoving her calf around thish morning, and abushing it very badly. I had sheveral shoices of what to do. There ish the sugar shenario, or shoot her, or shimply shout. My sholution was to shut my eyesh and shy away from the schene. Shucks, whatever will be will be. :roll: :wink:
 
Scottish accent :? Not many have time to deal with these incidents anyway. Walk away is a good strategy. As I was trying to figure out if that was an accent, I noticed that your avatar reads "Northern Nebraska Sandhills". Got me to wondering, how much of Nebraska is Sandhills? Are the corn growing areas sandy or loamy or clay? How plentiful is the ground water?
 
per said:
Scottish accent :? Not many have time to deal with these incidents anyway. Walk away is a good strategy. As I was trying to figure out if that was an accent, I noticed that your avatar reads "Northern Nebraska Sandhills". Got me to wondering, how much of Nebraska is Sandhills? Are the corn growing areas sandy or loamy or clay? How plentiful is the ground water?
Click to expand...

Itsh jusht my shpeech impediment :wink: as I thought about "sugar, shooting, shouting, or shutting my eyes and shying away from the situation. :)

What are the Sandhills?

The Nebraska Sandhills is a unique area, both in size and appearance. Native grassland covers 19,600 square miles of wind-deposited sand dunes. Its geology makes the area rich for wildlife, water and ranching.

The Land

19,600 square miles
Largest sand dune formation in America
95% grassland
1.3 million acres of wetlands
1 billion acre-feet of groundwater
2.4 million acre-feet of spring-fed streamflow discharged annually

The entire state of Nebraska has 77,421 square miles, so the Sandhills represents about one fourth of the state's area. The Sandhills region also extends for a few miles into South Dakota all along the border.

Ground water is very plentiful. Our "ace in the hole" is the fact that we sit on top of the Ogallala Acquifer.

The Ogallala Aquifer, also known as the High Plains Aquifer, is a vast yet shallow underground water table aquifer located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. One of the world's largest aquifers, it covers an area of approximately 174,000 mi² (450,000 km²) in portions of the eight states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. It was named in 1898 by N.H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska. About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States overlies this aquifer system, which yields about 30 percent of the nation's ground water used for irrigation. In addition, the aquifer system provides drinking water to 82 percent of the people who live within the aquifer boundary.
 
Tough Cowboy Image!!! Now that's pretty funny stuff-I'm more on the cuddly side for those who know me lol. I don't think a case of milk fever is quite the same as this weird condition you are talking about. Here's an analogy for you-basically on a ranch your the boss and your cattle are your employees-they provide you with an income and you provide them with the necessities they need to provide it-correct. Now if you were running a company and over the years your employees had all been good workers and trouble free how would react to a worker than you needed to shoot up with drugs or powders and put on body armour because they were wrecking their workspace and endangering your safety. I'm pretty sure you'd fire them-I guess I'm just not afraid to fire a cow-you might ship ones that won't give you trouble again but you'll get rid of all the ones who have done it once. I don't know about your wife and kids but if they get told- 'Go check cows but you have to watch this list of numbers it doesn't play too well'. Over the years I've only had to shoot two cows both were in a situation that I wasn't capable of dealing with and in country a vet couldn't get too.
 
per said:
The sugar things makes sense. It would stem back to the fertility on the soil that the feed was grown on. Another reason to consider cutting your hay at the time of day when the sugar content is highest in the plant.
Click to expand...

The way it was explained to us was that this condition is comparable to a diebetic person getting irritable because of low blood sugar. We tried this cure on a whim by drenching the cow with 2 litres of water and four cups of brown sugar. In both cases the calf roller, pawer, killer cows were transformed into good mommas within 20 minutes.
I have no idea if the NEXT owner had any problems. :wink:
 
One thing we do when we tag is tie the calf with a pigging string-the cows usually will come up and check them out while were making up a tag-the calf most times gets done kicking and you can get them tagged-the odd one has gotten whipped with the free end of the string. If we get a cow that's too breachy to get her calf tagged you know where she goes. I've never had one savage a calf but years ago I had an old red baldie that would stand over it and beller for a day or so.
 
gcreekrch said:
per said:
The sugar things makes sense. It would stem back to the fertility on the soil that the feed was grown on. Another reason to consider cutting your hay at the time of day when the sugar content is highest in the plant.
Click to expand...

The way it was explained to us was that this condition is comparable to a diebetic person getting irritable because of low blood sugar. We tried this cure on a whim by drenching the cow with 2 litres of water and four cups of brown sugar. In both cases the calf roller, pawer, killer cows were transformed into good mommas within 20 minutes.
I have no idea if the NEXT owner had any problems. :wink:
Click to expand...


I've had one or two do this.

Since I calve close to the barn and my cattle are ' tame'....I just take a pan of sweet feed and pour a gob of cheap pancake syrup over it....she eats it up.

In about an hour or so....it's all over and life rolls on.
 
Northern Rancher said:
One thing we do when we tag is tie the calf with a pigging string-the cows usually will come up and check them out while were making up a tag-the calf most times gets done kicking and you can get them tagged-the odd one has gotten whipped with the free end of the string. If we get a cow that's too breachy to get her calf tagged you know where she goes. I've never had one savage a calf but years ago I had an old red baldie that would stand over it and beller for a day or so.
Click to expand...

Those kind don't concern me.

One of these "sugar dolls" was a heifer that calved on her own and immediately started to get really aggresive. We were barn calving then so we pulled the calf under the gate and penned it so she could see and lick it through the gate and went away. Two hours later she had a four fott crater in the middle of the pen and was still trying to eliminate her summer responsibility. As we are not into bottle calves and had no surrogate mothers available at the time, we tried the sugar. As I said in the first post it worked and in another situation like this I would use it again.

All but about four of our cows will accept me tagging and doctoring their calf as long as I don't leave the bike. About 50% would not be a problem if you got off, I would not trust the rest.
 
Bud Williams told a story about how he went to a ranch that couldn't tag any calves after a year of being handled by him they got them all tagged the next season-it seems the less we monkey with ours the quieter they get. When I was younger I used to relish the man vs cow calving wars but now I don't so much. Probably the worst cattle we have to handle are old $H heifers they can have a mind of their own lol.
 
I don't think a case of milk fever is quite the same as this weird condition you are talking about.
Click to expand...
Au contraire, Northern Rancher it is very much the same. The problem I described is not genetic, is no indication that a heifer will have a poor temperament, is not something that tends to happen a second time and only affects the animal for a few hours (or minutes) after calving. So my question remains - would you shoot or ship a cow if it needed to be treated for milk fever? If not there is even less need to shoot or ship a cow with the condition I described.
I guess if you get a case someday you might just have a calf less to sell. Won't cost me anything :lol:
 
How can you prove it's not genetic-you can't can you-for everyone that needs a sugar fix I'll bet theres a couple that are just crazy made. I good friend had to can four direct EXT's one spring for freaking out on there calves. A milk fever cow is usually down and out I understand-if she happened to be calving in the open where we'd find her she'd get treated. How do you propose getting a berserk cow calving on the grass or in the thick bush to eat two pounds of sugar. We all don't raise chop pail maidens-if you read my post I've had to shoot two cows in 25 years that's probably 3,000 calvings. If a cow got milk fever in some of our pastures we'd find her dead in 92 years of running cattle so it doesn't concern me. Calving on pasture means your problems have to be self cleansing-if a cow goes nuts and kills her calf she'll get shipped whether it's genetic or her having a bad hair day-I can't and won't risk it happening again.
 
How can you prove it's not genetic-you can't can you....
Click to expand...
Ah, we're back to issuing challenges again. I'll leave you to argue this one with yourself because it's obvious you are talking out of a hole in your hat. Reading your posts it's obvious you had never heard of, or encountered, this condition 24 hours ago and now you are an authority on whether "it" has a genetic component or not.
 
Whatever-I said how can you prove a cow that savages her calf doesn't have a genetic problem-some might need a sugar daddy but a lot might just be genetically predisposed to act that way. I never claimed to be an authority but obviously it takes a large number of posts to get it through a certain thick head that some of us cull cows that others molly coddle along and make excuses for. Maybe weld yourself a loading chute next time and learn how to use it.
 

Latest posts

Top