No Bull About Our Bull Calves

I was surfing the internet the other day and came across some comments on an article that said dairy farmers do not care for their bull calves. On our farm, and many others nearby, that is not the case.

Why do dairy farmers like bull calves? While it would be nice to have more heifer calves to grow up to be milk cows, the bulls become another source of income for our farm. We have no reason to give them less care than our heifer calves.

We raise the baby bull calves in the same calf barn as the heifers. They receive the same care and same feed. To keep them healthy we vaccinate both at the same time. The main difference in management is that we castrate the bulls usually sometime before they are a month old (and you can read more about castrating calves from Ryan Goodman).

After these steers are around three months of age or more we will sell them because we do not have the room to raise them and our heifers on our farm. We have several neighbors that like to raise weaned (from milk) calves to keep for beef for themselves or to sell later after they've grown more.

Bull calves are an important part of our farm and we want to make sure when they leave they are healthy and well.

Ackbar, the Suspicious Heifer

See the heifer on the right? I'm naming her Ackbar after Admiral Ackbar from The Return of the Jedi Star Wars movie.



She was definitely not walking into a trap like that one. We were trying to move this group of eleven heifers to another field. The heifers are sorted by age and size and this group was ready to join another.

We sat up a small corral and moved a feed box into it to give them grain and a good reason to go in on their own. Once inside we could ease them into the waiting cattle trailer.

Now this went well for the for the first two trips with the trailer.

But Ackbar and her cohorts decided they would not go into the corral. We went back yesterday and fed them, but they were still not convinced that they should do as we asked. Today we found them lounging in the shade. No matter what sweet words I used to call them forward they refused to move out into the sun. 

We may not have the power of the force, but we do have time and patience. A few more days of feeding in the corral and I think we will win them over to our side.

(Story continues: Hitman For Ackbar and Ackbar Comes Home)