Alan":32zg1dqq said:
All my cows come to call, or see that I'm headed for a gate they come running, the ones that wear me out are the young calves. After chasing them up and down the fence line for an hour I'm just hoping to push them through the fence, since the herd is long gone in fresh pasture.
My question do you guys/gals with cow dogs use them on 3 to 4 week old calves?
Thanks,
Alan
I wouldn't suggest using a cattle dog on baby calves in that situation. If they get scared enough, that won't be the only fence that they crawl through. When we worked on a ranch a few years back, we had one take off after getting scared like that, and never found it again.
Chase all the calves up into the herd BEFORE you open the gate, and hopefully the mamas will find their calves, and at least the calves will be in the bunch when the gate is opened. Besides which, if the cows are all gone, and you push the calves through the fence, they will crawl back unless the cows come back to find them. Their instinct is to go back to the place that they last sucked/saw mama.