Weaning Calves- The “Why” and the “How”

it's been about eight and a half months since the 2020 calving season began for us here on the ranch and that means that the calves are now starting to get old and they're actually ready to enter the next phase it's time to say goodbye to mama and hit these mangers and start gaining some weight that's what we're doing today on farmer tyler ranch [Music] i've been asked a few times why we wean the calves a lot of people don't understand the purpose of this and it just really appears to be sort of a mean thing to do to separate a baby from its mother but there's actually a couple of important reasons why this has to be done the first reason is feed as winter sets in and these cattle's diet consists mostly of what i'm giving them if we try to feed all the calves and the mothers together the calves are not going to get a fair amount of feed because the bigger cows are going to steal it all from them not to mention the fact that the cows at this stage in their life need to be on a maintenance diet whereas we want the calves to grow and to be on a grow diet and it's virtually impossible to do this when the animals are housed together another reason is milk production the cattle in this herd are gonna start having their calves for the 2021 season in about four months so in that amount of time they need a chance to dry up and just sort of kind of take it easy for a little while before their new calves come in the spring and we got to do this all over again the calves are big enough now where they can drink every drop of milk that mother is producing and that actually puts a lot of stress on her body as she tries to keep up with that need so now that the calves really don't need the milk it's more of just something that they want it is the time for them to separate get away from mother let her recover and now with their new found appetites they can go up to the mangers and eat all the hay that i can give them this year however there is an exception not every single calf out here is going to get weaned this little girl right here that was only born a couple yeah maybe three weeks ago now sort of a surprise and definitely off schedule for this herd she'll stay with mom i think that we will put the calf and the mother in with the butcher steers and the rest of the weaned calves for now that's going to be fine because it's not muddy out here yet when it starts to get muddy we might have to make some changes but that is the plan at least for today i've already successfully made my mad dash out to the gate to lock the herd in the main corral here and as you can see a couple of these cattle are just almost too cooperative and have already walked back in here in the working corral so in order to get this all done i've got to go and bring the entire herd in here and then we can start separating [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right i think on some level they know it's about weaning time and that's maybe why they were so reluctant to get in here part of it also was that there's a little bit of hay in this manger here and they were all kind of stopping and trying to eat there that certainly didn't help but we got them all in here except for hank and the new calf but hank and the new calf are going to go into the little pasture with the butcher steers so rather than try to bring them in with everybody else which i really don't want to do especially with the calf there's a gate into that little field and i think we'll just try to run them both into there and i will try to get number 13 back out there with her calf as soon as i can and hopefully that'll settle everybody down [Music] [Music] last year look at that steer go to him yeah not mud it's not fun [Music] okay you guys watch her for me [Music] so [Music] so [Music] hmm come on oh my gosh cannot believe this didn't get stepped on hey get out of here this is a real professional film job here but i had to get number 13 by herself so that i can put her out with her calf and she's not happy about this so we'll see if she gets a idea we're gonna hope she turns rather than trying to jump the fence there we go your baby's out here we got a reunion what a beautiful thing okay so real quick what happened there as i was bringing cattle out of this little corral number 13 kept coming up to the gate she was really wanting out and i thought that if i just ran in front of her and closed that exit gate i could catch her and get her back out with her calf well that kind of happened but when she came through a bunch of the other ones came through with her and when i saw that crowd of animals in this little corel i was i was sure there went a 400 camera but by some miracle nobody stepped on the camera the tripod got slightly bent barely at all it's still usable but that's all that happened so anyway 13 is back out with her calf we still got a few more adult cows in here so let's get back to work there you are just that's as fast as we go there so we're getting down sort of to the bottom of the barrel here and i think it's going to be easier for me to just go ahead and grab a group of calves and get them out of there there's still a few adult cows that need to come out there's one that needs to stay because she's gonna go through the shoot we'll get into that a little bit later but yeah the way these calves are all kind of backed up here i think i'll grab as many of them as i can and then we'll go back to getting cows um [Music] i'll turn around there he's getting it on kids look what your friends are doing look what your friends are doing [Music] figuring something out hey boys come on kids about just you i know you know the way out now you go all righty lump jaw you got to stay sorry but you can go you you born you too 52 back there on the barn she's facing the right way so if we kind of can get this calf to move maybe she will go forward now we can get in here all right we're just down to a pile of calves and this cow that needs to go through the chute so she's wanting to go through the gate bad the cavs are not unfortunately i don't need her to go through this gate i need her to go through a different one so i'm hoping that it's not going to be too hard to separate them and keep her in here by herself um i've got all the gates behind me closed so if she was to get by it's not going to be the end of the world so let's go ahead and give this a go um there you guys what are you waiting for everyone's going come on hey just go by it's okay here all right kids here is your new home well now that everybody is separated i'm gonna go ahead and feed the cows and the calves um in their mangers for the first time this year and that should settle the cows down for at least a little while because now they're mad about two things they're mad that their babies are gone and they're mad because they're hungry so we can take away one of those and we're gonna do it i have to say this haystack is making me a little bit nervous i gotta climb up there and i don't know how well it's going to translate to uh to camera how far that stack is leaning so i really hope that it doesn't fall over when i'm up there if i'm careful it should be fine but man that just look at that thing all right well that's the leaner there it doesn't look as bad up here so i guess we're just gonna do it oh that's not what i wanted ah it's a long jump it's a long jump okay so what happened there um i just throwing a few bales off of the top of this stack that's leaning so bad so that when i walk on it it's a little more steady and one of the bales bounced off the ground into the manger and i'm not ready to have hay in there just yet because if there's only one bale in there the cows all swarm on it and they're a lot more likely to break something in the manger when that's going on so that's why i had to jump down there to pull that bail out before they screwed something up and i did so all's well that ends well let's uh let's get some hay down in that manger so they can eat so all right mom and cows are fed and they are using every last slot in this manger which i actually don't like i like there to be a few open spots on the end in case somebody's getting bullied out then they've always got somewhere to go but i haven't pulled coal cows out yet i know i've been saying that i'm gonna do it for like the last month but uh things just keep getting in the way i'm hoping maybe next weekend we'll see um but once coal cows come out that'll free up a few more spots here so they they just gotta survive like this for a little while now that they're taken care of let's go throw some hay in the manger for those [Music] calves [Music] so [Music] a few years ago on the ranch i started doing what is called fence line weaning and that is exactly like what it sounds this fence right here is all that separates mothers and calves and although there's no one standing here yet because they're all up eating in probably an hour so you'll have a line of mothers on this side of the fence and a line of calves on the other side the fence will still be separating them so they are still being weaned but they're able to touch noses through the fence and sniff each other and it's thought that this really eases the transition and minimizes the stress on both mother and calf this is good not only just because it's the nice right thing to do but it also is going to be a lot better for the calves as far as keeping their immune systems in top shape because weaning is one of the most stressful times in their lives and one of the times when they're more susceptible to catching different sorts of diseases so i feel that doing it this way it's easier on the animals and it's better for them everything is quiet out here now but you can rest assured that in about 20 or 30 minutes when all the haze cleaned up at the big manger there's gonna be a racket out here and it'll last for about three days we always say it takes three days to get the ball out thanks for hanging out with me today guys and i hope i'll see you again on farmer tyler ranch [Music] so [Music] bye

Channel: Farmer Tyler Ranch

Views: 105,161

Keywords: Weaning calves, Working cows, Calves, Weaning, Farmer Tyler Ranch, Why, How, Ranch work, Farm work, Our Wyoming life

Id: Ow_isgZD5XQ

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020