cloud9cattle":3mr9t5p8 said:
Most saw my post below about establishing a herd and thinking about what breed of bull to use. However we did purchase a brangus second calf heifer as an investment to rebreed and sell in the fall. However we noticed yesterday that she was letting one of our younger heifers nurse? Is this normal? When we bought her she had a 500 pound steer pulled off of her.
Most of our heifers are about 400-500 pounds and about 4-5 months old except for this larger brangus heifer. Do we need to skip breeding her and sell her immediatley? Do we need to sell the heifer thats nursing as well?
So she is gone for now and that might solve your issue for today.
Well, I am no guru, but I will tell you what we do with "unwanted suckers".
If not properly weaned - and like children whith poor manners - it can happen to the best of us - we will stick them in a pen far from other cows and let her holler for a couple of month or more if she wants to. All by her lonesome.
Doing that right now becasuse I want to break a real nice one of robbing. She lives if she learns - she dies if she does not.
No 12 step programs here - learn or die.
I do not use the BS blab / can't suck / hope and a prayer plactic crap on their nose. Some folks say it works.
I say there is a sucker born every minute. Pun intended!
When I let her out I do not let her back in with the herd until the cow(s) she was sucking have calved and are established as pairs.
If you do not have the room to do this then you are already over stocked or under infrastructured and need to re-evaluate your position and how you manage your herd.
I catch her sucking on another cow`s tits again she is either fattened for the freezer or down the road.
This is a continuous problem on this board and I believe it is simply because folks do not like to make the hard decision.
There are lots of good animals out there. She is worth a dollar - sell her and replace her - or eat her if she re-offends.
There will be a ton of folks who will disagree and that is fine. Not pointing at you - but one thing for dam
sure - we do not have this problem - and if we did - we do not wonder about it, moan about it and complain about it. We fix it!
It can get out of hand, it can ruin other cows and it can harm calves - so now you know what we do.
What you do is up to you.
Good luck to you
Cheers
Bez__