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Are calves taken from their mother?

Krista Stauffer

Two years ago we had a day where 7 calves were born within hours of each other. We had two sets of twins. This cow in the picture above was having some trouble pushing her calf out. So farmer stepped in to help. Little did we know she was having twins. This calf that farmer is helping pull out was the first born. As you can see there are two adorably cute jersey calves wondering around, they were from another cow.

Once the calves are born, you can see in the picture above that the mother is cleaning the calf off. You can also see from the picture that the other set of twins are completely dried off but no mother? The mother cleaned them off and headed to the feed bunk. Once everyone was dried off and had their first meal (colostrum) the calves were taken to our calf barn and our cows walked across our yard to the barn.

One thing I would like to note is that our children were there for every step of the way. The were able to witness how we need to help our girls, make sure the calves are ok and even get to love on them. This is very important. ALL too often I hear people say that the cows charge people to protect their calves. This is not true. If that were the case than this would be a dangerous situation for us adults and especially children! You can clearly see by the pictures that our girls are very comfortable with us, they trust us and they allow us to love on their babies.

What do we do with the calves once they are separated from their mothers?

We take the calves to an individual calf pen. The pen is either full of shavings or straw. As you can see in the photo below.

We keep the babies for 1-2 weeks in an individual pen. We like to watch them closely to make sure they are healthy! What do we feed them and how much colostrum do they get? They get as much colostrum as the mother produces. We milk the mother and then feed the baby with a bottle. On occasion, the calf will get it’s first feeding from the mother in the maternity pen. We feed the calves morning and night. Once the calf is done with colostrum, we feed them whole fresh milk from the cows.

We have to take the calves away from the mother in order to provide consumers with wholesome yummy milk! Yes, there are smaller farms that keep the calves with their mothers but that is just simply not something we can do with the amount of cows we milk.

Once the calves have been trained on an individual bucket to drink their milk they are moved into a group pen with an outside area. You can see below:
Our calves are continued to be fed fresh whole milk. At about two weeks we allow them barley grain and alfalfa hay. Our calves are weaned at 90 days. Sometimes they are may stay on milk longer depending on the calf. Weaning means that we are transitioning them from whole milk to water. We do this by decreasing the amount of milk they are given over a two week period until the are fully on water.
They are then transferred to another group pen where they are continued to be fed barley and hay. At about five months depending on the time of year they are then transferred to a pasture area. This is what they look like on our pasture. Yes, I mow the yard in a way so they can eat the grass. NO, we do not fertilize or spray our yard.
Once they are around 15 months old we move them to another pasture. This is when they are introduced to a bull. As you can tell we have Holsteins, jerseys & Holstein/jersey crosses. We breed all our heifers with a jersey bull to insure they do not have too big of a calf when they calve for the first time.

This is one of our breeding age heifers on pasture, as you can see they are super scared of us!

Once the heifers are put with the bull we typically expect a calf anywhere from 10-12 months later. As long as they are healthy, fed good feed, have plenty of access to vitamins and minerals they will breed within that time frame.

I would like to add that yes, our cows give birth yearly. But I would also like to add that they would still give birth once a year if they were released into the “wild”. They would still ovulate & a bull would still breed them. I would also like to point out that cows and women are much the same. Sometimes you see a mother nursing a newborn baby and sometimes you see a mother nursing a five year old. Sometimes mothers have an abundance of milk, sometimes they have hardly any and sometimes they do not produce milk for as long as they would like. Cows are very similar. Most cows need to have a calf every year to continue to produce milk. However there are situations where cows will be milking for longer periods of time without becoming or needing to become pregnant to continue producing milk. We have had situations where the cow milked for a year without being bred but still continued to produce enough milk to pay for her feed.

Now because we use bulls, we have no control over if there is a bull or heifer born. All our bulls are raised within our community or on our farm. You can read more about bull calves here.

In the photo above is 128! She as many other of our milk cows we raised from babies. She is happy and healthy!
Note: The title of this blog post changed on 11/20/2014.

 
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Krista Stauffer

Owner at Stauffer Dairy
Krista didn't grow up on a farm but fell in love with a dairy farmer and now works alongside her husband on their family dairy farm, raising five children. Despite her non-farm upbringing, she embraces farm life, enjoys gardening, and remodeling their farmhouse. She also runs a successful women's boutique, manages social media for local businesses, and serves on the board of a non-profit creamery, showcasing her dedication to entrepreneurship and community service.
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