when starting – what do you prefer: calf or youngster

[fabian]

@sanhestar 5420 wrote:

Rotes Höhenvieh aka Devon.

Sabine

I thought so…..Vogelsberg…..
The Lamborghini-Breed 😉
Everything is possible

Wolfgang

[Howie]

Sabine

The Devons are the easy ones.:):)

Howie

[sanhestar]

Howie,

I heard that Devons aren’t the best beginner’s breed…..

@Wolfgang: always wanted to drive a Lamborghini 🙂

I asked my hubby about Pinzgauer and Holstein-Frisians and Highland Cattle and Höhenvieh (my choices) and he said: Höhenvieh.

I’ll do anything to keep him happy (he has to put up with a really crazy wife 😀 )

Sabine

[Howie]

Sabine

The only problem with the Devon is he is very smart.:) He will learn from your mistakes as well as from your directions.:eek:

Howie

[sanhestar]

Howie,

I second that wholeheartedly.

It took little Emmy two turns to figure out that she can “outsmart” me by wedging herself between two older cows.

But I’m not as gullible as the thinks I am :-). Fortunately for me she responds so well to body position that I can push her in the other direction and keep her away from them cows.

The last thing I did with her was to stop her with body language and not allow her to pass me. The look on her face was worth paying for!

[Vicki]

My best team are my first. They were “wild” on their mothers until almost three months old. The mothers were tame, though. I had to separate the calves into a big box stall, start bottle feeding them to get them to trust me, then started tieing, brushing, teaching set-in/set-out and so on.

They are Dexters who are very smart. Also very affectionate. They are a very fine-tuned and totally trustworthy pair and we just about read each other’s minds. It was perfect for me. I didn’t have time then to raise newborns.

They were past the stage of sudden dying, didn’t depend on the bottle though I used it for a long time, zippy as all get-out, and bonded to each other already. Being Dexters, at 3 months they were still little and I could physically control them (barely.)

I have since raised several baby calves and trained them. While I find they are usually very tame and learn commands easily, I also find they have less “manners” about dominance. They are more apt to crowd, butt, etc. than the Dexters ever were; and more apt to resist training by refusing to walk or lying down.

Some of these differences may be accounted for by breed and individuality, and by my own committment to the training; but I liked the older calves.

My ideal is to have cows that are somewhat trained, then leave the calves on them, and work with the calves. Cattle that are in a herd have more “fear of God” in them, IMHO, which I think helps them to follow and trust my leadership.

I think the temperament of the dams, the general attitude of the calves’ herd toward people, and the calves first impressions of humans (pain and fear or positive associations) will have a big influence on the tractability of calves.

[fabian]

@Vicki 5674 wrote:

My ideal is to have cows that are somewhat trained, then leave the calves on them, and work with the calves. Cattle that are in a herd have more “fear of God” in them, IMHO, which I think helps them to follow and trust my leadership.

So I do. Trained and handling-used mother cows do a lot of the work i had to do training bottle-fed calves. (hope that you understand my clumsy English ;))

Wolfgang

[Author]

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