Dis-bud....................you going to use paste or an electric dehorner? I used electric........could do them really young. Horn has to be through the skin, but if done correctly you won't have scurs.

We have an electric one, the Rhinehart X50. Her horns aren't through the skin yet but I'm watching closely for it.

I don't know the "number" of mine............I can use it for bigger calves. What would be ideal would be the Buddex..........can do when only a few days old.

Electric is much better than the Barnes or a saw..........much less stress, no worry about infections/flies, and they don't really go off feed.

Elsie is booteefull!

Here's Elsie today. She's a lot redder!



We disbudded her several months ago. You can't even tell where it happened and I'm so relieved that I didn't skip this step!

How come the itty bitty pen?

It's easy to move around. She spends most of her day out of the pen on a line grazing to her hearts content. We gets put up in the pen at night.

AnnaZ said:If the calf is wild now, may I be the first to inform you that it will NOT get any better, unless this beast is the exception

I wanted to update you on this. Our 13 year old daughter is responsible for the calf, and she leads her by the halter wherever they go. This calf is now as tame and domesticated as you could imagine.

She's still as pretty as can be. Love her nose.

That's good to hear. Glad that part worked out for you.

We decided to halter break some of our heifers - with mixed success. In most cases we didn't stick with it long enough and the effect was temporary.

Porkpal, if you do it young and they learn it, they *usually* remember it in later life. Key word there being *usually*.

I must have unusual heifers...

Or they may have been incorrigible students..................

The ones with a lot of Brahma blood - too much "ear" - can definitely be incorrigible!

Daisy calved again this morning! I haven't gotten near them yet so I don't know if it's a "he or a she" but it's a beautiful calf with beautiful markings.

We sold the bull last spring after he bred Daisy this last time, so this will be the last calf we get from him. I'd love it if this, too, was a heifer.

I'll post pics later in the day.

The new calf looks exactly like the bull did when he was a day old. We still haven't determined the sex yet but I didn't see anything hanging down when the calf was facing away from me so that's encouraging!!



Check out that udder on Daisy. We'll be milking soon, making butter, ghee, cheese, etc again!

Happy new calf!!

Dave, is this 24 hours after calving? If so it looks like Daisy may have retained some of the placenta. You don't want to let that go too long or she could get an infection. Have you located the placenta to check if it has been discarged in full or in part. I don't know if they use Oxytosen on cattle or not, but with the horses we can give them a shot of it and they will usually push it out.