Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Yegerlehner farm in Clay City, Indiana, potential nurse cows were initially selected because
the family did not want to milk them with the rest of the herd — the first candidates had mast-
itis or were cranky during milking. Alan Yegerlehner, who owns the farm with his wife, Mary,
said a good nurse cow must be willing to accept other cows' calves. Even if she kicks at them
during the initial feeding, with persistence she can be trained to accept them. If she keeps
kicking after two or three days, it is better to try another cow. The Yegerlehners use some
cows as nurses every year because the cows show an instinct for that role. A nurse cow also
must have enough body fat reserved to support the intensity of milking several calves. You
can tell by looking at cows if they are fat enough.
Uniting calves with a nurse cow is called
grafting
. Before grafting, calves can be left on their
mothers for at least a day or more so the calf gets a good start on its mother's colostrum. You
should graft all the new calves onto a nurse at the same time. These calves are separated from
their mothers and kept together so they can be introduced to the nurse cow together; a good
place to keep them would be your holding pen. Letting the calves fast for about 24 hours will
ensure they will be especially hungry once they are introduced to the nurse cow.
During the grafting process, a potential nurse cow is caught in a head gate so she cannot try to
avoid the calves that are not hers. After the first feeding, calves are separated from the nurse
cow and put into their pen until the next feeding. It usually takes four to eight feedings over
the course of at least a couple of days to complete the grafting process. After a couple of feed-
ings, you can try one feeding without restraining the nurse cow in a head gate. If everything
goes OK, the calves and the nurse cow are left together to bond for a couple of days before
they are returned to the pasture. From then on, each grafted calf must be responsible for its
own feeding because the nurse cow will not find them to make sure they eat. Nurse cows and
calves usually are kept as a separate group from the milking herd because if both groups were
kept together, calves would return to nurse from their birth mothers.
The nurse cow system is not perfect. The energy required to nurse multiple calves takes a toll
on a cow, and a potential side effect of this is that nurse cows can have trouble conceiving a
new calf the next year.
Weaning
Calves can be weaned as early as 2 or 3 months old or left to nurse as long as 9 months old.
Ideally, wait to wean the calves until they are at least 4 months old to give their rumens time
