aggressive mommas

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angus9259

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I decided to bring in some new blood. Bought a half dozen bred second calvers (my favorites since they've already had one calf but are still young). Different genetics but all from the same place. Very well known place selling a bull or two a year to ai studs. Have been great people to work with. No issues.

My issue:

As soon as they calve the are all EXTREMELY excited and almost freaked out about their calf. Screaming at it and rolling it around. I've even felt compelled to step in to "save" a calf or two from its momma and let it figure out how to stand up and such without its momma pushing it around. Once the mommas settle down (couple hours), they are great mommas. When my normal cows calve, they moo a little. Clean off the calf. Mother up. But stay sane. What's odd is that EVERY ONE of these six cows from this other place did the same thing even from different genetic backgrounds. This did NOT seem to be a difficult birth dilemma. I did have to pull twins out of one of them - but she ended up being the least freaked out. The rest just squirted right out. They weren't brand new to my place either. I bought them last October and they've been at my place all winter and calved in May. I feel like one of these freak shows is eventually gonna kill its calf (even though after an hour or so, they really are owning it and being great). If one does kill its calf, it won't be because she hates it, it will be because she's just lost her mind.

Is this normal? It must be genetic even though the cows all have different blood lines? Am I just used to my cows and mine are ABnormal?
 
I'm a firm believer that it's genetic. We call them SCREAMERS. I have traced it several generations in our cow herd. There all gone now. They just cause problems. It's like they are strongly imprinting on their new calf that they are momma and the calf needs to do what they say, when they say it, no questions.
 
I tend to agree with you that I have no desire to manage this. What a waste of $$$. I have a feeling this has probably become "normal" where they came from. Bulls from these very females (their first calves) I watched sell for $10-15,000 each in their bull sale this year but they calve in a barn where I'm sure they can and do watch them (due to their value if nothing else) and I work a day job and just can't plan on saving each calf from its momma. Then you wonder about retaining heifers or using their male offspring as herd sires (which was my plan) and realize all you may be doing by bringing in "new blood" is transitioning to an unmanageable situation.
 
I would strongly suspect that this is the exact reason these second calf mothers were available. Most people aren't looking to sell bred three year olds. I have only seen this type of aggression in a few of my cows over the years. I remember one cow that would scream and carry on so loud, that you knew when she calved even if you were half a mile away. She never hurt or killed one, but she was very rough on them until they were all the way up. When you went in to weigh and tag the calf, she would get right in close and look like she was coming for you, but she never actually did. Instead, If her calf was laying down when you came in to tag it, she would get past you and put her head down and push and roll the calf along the ground. She was an excellent cow, except for this trait, and raised 10 calves before I finally decided I'd had enough. I kept a couple daughters. One of them acted the same way. I'm much older now, and I would no longer tolerate this behavior no matter how good of a calf she raised.
 
Angus cows, I'm presuming?
B A R EXT Traveler 205 daughters had a reputation for being calf-killers - though out of tens of thousands of offspring, idk how many were like that...but enough that Angus folks 'in the know' were aware of the problem.
Other sires or family lines implicated...idk.
 
Lucky_P said:
Angus cows, I'm presuming?
B A R EXT Traveler 205 daughters had a reputation for being calf-killers - though out of tens of thousands of offspring, idk how many were like that...but enough that Angus folks 'in the know' were aware of the problem.
Other sires or family lines implicated...idk.
Click to expand...
The EXT line was what I heard too.
 
I have a very late calver that I should have sold as bred, but decided to calve her out. Well she finally calved on the 4th of July(heifer calf) but she is so hot we can't even walk by the corral and glance her way and she is on the fence wanting to take you. She was always pretty calm but now not so much. She's an older cow and has thrown some nice calves, but I'm to old to deal with craziness. Now trying to decide what to do. Turn her out and let her raise the calf and then sell her in January or just take them to the sale barn in 30 days and be done with her?
 
Sounds to me like you're interfering, when you dont have to, a "couple of hours", leave em be, and let them do their job. It works in the human world too, sometimes we need assistance and as you discovered momma was gratefull.
 
I had a lot of EXT up close in this herd back in those days, and most were excellent mothers. I didn't have any trouble dealing with most of them, but of course the more aggressive calves were never kept as replacements. I had to look back to see the pedigree on the one I described as rolling her new born calves around. She was born in 2003 and her mother was an EXT daughter. I had purchased her as a bred cow expecting her third calf. After she had that calf, I began to suspect she was sold because of her calving behavior. I remember that I asked why there was no weaning records for her 2005 & 2006 calves, the seller said something about one had an an eye injury and the other was given to a 4H kid. I always found that suspicious. Fortunately she never injured any of her calves here.

I also had a 2012 heifer that was a calf killer. Her sire was an EXT son and her mother went back to EXT in three generations. The EXT line has a lot of really good qualities, but disposition is not one of them. I hadn't considered the aggressiveness towards their calves to be related to EXT, because they were in general very attentive mothers, but I'm thinking that now.
 
I did wonder if that cows behavior only happened when I was watching, but there was no way to know that. I only actually saw her calve once, and that was from a good distance away using binoculars. I heard her calve more than once and saw her pushing the calf when we came over to check it out. She would do that until the calf was a week or so old. She would also take off after, and head butt any calves that came near her own for about the first week. Fortunately she would hide out and calve far away from all the others and only bring it down later. Strangely she was never aggressive towards us and was actually quite friendly. She gave me a bad scare once though. I was out in the pasture and had walked up to look at a new calf that was hiding in the brush. As I walked back towards the ATV I saw her about 100 yards down hill. She suddenly turned and came running across the pasture towards me like I was about to die. She was there in a second and only then did I realize that little calf had gotten up and was following me. She hit him and knocked him down. I yelled at her and after hitting the calf again she took off back down the hill towards her own calf. To this day I have no idea what she was thinking.
 
angus9259 said:
I decided to bring in some new blood. Bought a half dozen bred second calvers (my favorites since they've already had one calf but are still young). Different genetics but all from the same place. Very well known place selling a bull or two a year to ai studs. Have been great people to work with. No issues.

My issue:

As soon as they calve the are all EXTREMELY excited and almost freaked out about their calf. Screaming at it and rolling it around. I've even felt compelled to step in to "save" a calf or two from its momma and let it figure out how to stand up and such without its momma pushing it around. Once the mommas settle down (couple hours), they are great mommas. When my normal cows calve, they moo a little. Clean off the calf. Mother up. But stay sane. What's odd is that EVERY ONE of these six cows from this other place did the same thing even from different genetic backgrounds. This did NOT seem to be a difficult birth dilemma. I did have to pull twins out of one of them - but she ended up being the least freaked out. The rest just squirted right out. They weren't brand new to my place either. I bought them last October and they've been at my place all winter and calved in May. I feel like one of these freak shows is eventually gonna kill its calf (even though after an hour or so, they really are owning it and being great). If one does kill its calf, it won't be because she hates it, it will be because she's just lost her mind.

Is this normal? It must be genetic even though the cows all have different blood lines? Am I just used to my cows and mine are ABnormal?
Click to expand...
 
Life's too short to tolerate this nonsense. There's a lot of other good cattle available that you won't be risking injury owning. Their genetics don't mean much if you get hurt.
 
Dave said:
It could be the reason these second calvers were for sale.
Click to expand...
Anything is possible. They had 80 cows for sale that were a month outside their calving window from first calf heifers to mature cows. I did a lot of research and they certainly don't seem like that kind of place and the amount of business they get sure seems like it would trickle off if it were, but who knows. Suppose you can't trust anyone. I called him on it when it was happening and we talked about it. I suspect it's what they see as normal.

Side note - I probably mislabeled this thread using the word "aggressive". I got in the pen with all of them. They were not mean, just really freaked out. If they killed their calf (which they certainly could) it would NOT be because they "attacked" it like a coyote or something. It would be by accident by rolling them around too much or accidentally up against a gate (which is why I intervened on the one I did). I know mean cows and they don't stay. This, as they say, is a horse of different color.
 
Never seen this in any of my angus momma's. I have ones that stay right with their new borns for a week or so ( I like !) and some that hide them out and leave them . Never seen one mistreat their new born . My dad and I had registered polled shorthorns; had a couple of heifers that wouldn't take their first calf without putting them in the head catch for a couple of days .
 

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