Calf Stealers

[twabscs]

Dun mentioned the concept of a calf stealer on another thread and I would like to understand this a bit more. I'm putting this on the begginer board as I've only been at this now for about a year. Anyway, my first calf dropped back on December 5th, so the calf is about 8 weeks old.

Yesterday when I was out feeding some cubes I noticed that this calf was "nursing" on another one of my bred cows. Not sure if it was getting any milk, but it was trying, and the cow didn't seem to care. This went on for a few minutes. Is this a potential calf stealer?

The calf is healthy and growing normally. The only other odd item about this calf is that I noticed once that the very tip of it's tail was bleeding like another calf had been sucking on it or something, but it was fine the next day.

Thanks,

Tom

 

[jcarkie]

not a calf stealer, the cow that steals a calf will act like the newborn is hers and take it from the natural mother. once the cow bonds with the calf it is hard to steal the calf. that is why people like to leave new moms and babies alone for a few days.
all baby's will nurse on other cows if they can get away with it. the calf will steal the colostrum from her calf if it contiues to nurse on the expectant cow.

 

[twabscs]

Thanks, looks like more "facilities" work for me. I've got three calves on the ground that are early. It would be great to be able to separate the "pairs" from the "breds" so I could feed the lactating cows more and also stop this sort of behavior. Yet another item for the to do list for when it warms up a bit.

 

[Workinonit Farm]

I agree with jcarkie, that has been my experience.

Katherine

 

[Beefy]

last year we sold a bunch of calves and about a month later i noticed this cow off to herself lowing for her calf. i knew we had sold the cows calf already. she couldnt be having another one so soon and i could tell she hadnt aborted. her milk had dried up. so i didnt think anything of it, figured she was just being weird. next day cow shows up with a 300 lb calf on the teat. this calf belonged to another cow, was several months younger than the other cows calf but otherwise looked nearly identical, just a few hundred pounds lighter. cows starts nursing this calf and pretty much adopts it. two meals for the calf, calf is happy. cow comes back into milk after a month of being dry.


the other day the mother of that roan calf i posted (shes a first calver) got mixed up and claimed the gray white face calf. and sort of abandoned her calf by accident. so i had one calf with no mom and one calf with two moms. got them separated in the pasture long enough for the hungry calf to eat from its mom. now both calves are nursing on both cows. so whatever. as long as everyone is claimed its all good.

 

[randiliana]

Quite often a calf stealer is a cow that hasn't calved, but is in the early stages of labour. Her hormones are telling her that the calf is hers, even though she hasn't given birth. We run into a few of these every year, some of them are more detirmined that the calf is theirs than the real mother. We usually try to take to cow that hasn't calved away and put her into a pen where she cannot get back to the other calf. Once they calve they are usually not a problem. If you calve in a large are the chances of having this happen are diminished.

 

[twabscs]

randiliana, that may be the case here. 47 cows on 110 acres with three calves on the ground. The other 44 cows will calve over the next 45 days.

 

[randiliana]

randiliana, that may be the case here. 47 cows on 110 acres with three calves on the ground. The other 44 cows will calve over the next 45 days.

That sounds like they should have enough room really. But you never know. The calf could be stealing if its mother doesn't have enough milk, and some calves just don't have a problem with getting dinner from someone other than mom.

Heifers are really bad for that, it isn't unusual to go into a pen of heifers with their calves and see 2 or 3 calves sucking from the same cow, or to see the wrong calf sucking a cow. As long as the cow doesn't object she is fair game ;-)

 

[dun]

The problem we had with calf stealers were cows that would claim any calf they could and would fight off the calves actual mother. One cow on marginal forage trying to raise 3-4 calves is a disaster.
Most of the cows would let other claves nurse, kind of like "hey ma, billy came over for lunch". Tose weren;t the ones that were the problem. Frequently they would alternate babysitting dutys and while the cows went off to graze, one would stay with the calves and feed them if they got hungry.

dun

 

[backhoeboogie]

I've never owned a "calf stealer" but I own some cows that will let other calves back door them when they nurse their own. That is a bad trait in my opinion because it takes from the natural calf.

Currently we have a nurse cow (she's dry) that is 1/2 holstein and 1/2 jersey. Her calf can't nurse her down so we have to put another on her. That is a pain when I don't need her to be a nurse cow as I have to acquire another calf. I try to get a split from the sale barn. It is also much harder to wean a calf off of a cow like that. I have seen other calves besides her own and the dedicated calf nurse on that cow.

 

[KNERSIE]

When running cows on the veld extensively as I do even the cow that don't steal, but that still allows other calves to drink is still a problem. i ahd a first calver a few years ago that didn't steal calves, but she allowed every calf to drink. I once saw her with three calves drinking at the same time. To cut a long story short....she weaned the lightest calf that year, although she was one of the heaviest milkers, she got so poor she ended up open and made a trip to the sale barn. I ended up with a sorry calf and good genetics lost in the process.

 

[sidney411]

I'm having troubles with heifers that lost their calf at birth. I've had no problems with grafting calves to those heifers but those are also the heifers that let every other calf and their dog nurse. I've got one locked up in a pasture by herslf for this very reason. She should calve within the next month and I couldn't keep the calves off her. I made the mistake of putting her in the same pasture as the heifer I bought to put on her which has been weaned for 4 months and I am raising for a replacement and she went back to nursing. This heifer has been in a whole different county for 4 months, I couldn't believe it when I caught her nursing again. I'm hoping that after she has her '1st' natural calf she won't allow this to happen again. If not she grows wheels. Anyone else notice this happening?

 

[randiliana]

We have seen this. Best thing you can do is separate the animals that HAVE calved from the ones that HAVEN'T calved. Plus it helps to reduce disease problems.

 

[jcarkie]

i had a 1st calf heifer do that and i put her up by herself till she calved and she still let the others nurse so i put her up again for a month or so and after that she got better, they need time to bond with the calf then they get territorial toward the others. i don't worry about a bunch of little ones trying to nurse the others, they all do it, it is when they keep doing it.

 

[Beefy]

Sidney-
just the other day i caught a Cow nursing her bull calf and a 3 year old daughter, while the daughter's calf was nursing her. it was one big lactating orgy. i'll probably have to sell the daughter since i'm sure this will be a recurring problem.

 

[msscamp]

randiliana, that may be the case here. 47 cows on 110 acres with three calves on the ground. The other 44 cows will calve over the next 45 days.

What you have is a robbing calf nursing an indifferent mother to be. You might want to think about putting the cows that have already calved in a different pasture to keep the robbing little turkeys from getting colostrum that a newborn needs. A different pasture will also eliminate the potential problem - notice I said potential - of curious calves interfering with a new, young mother taking care of her calf.