Post by Lannie on Jul 15, 2011 13:59:31 GMT -5
Thank you, Heather and Becky
Joann, we want to get rid of the devil spawn we call Taz this fall. He's not tame in any sense of the word, and won't BE tamed. He injures me almost every day, and I don't want to put up with him any longer than I have to. Bandit has a bad habit of drying herself off when I take her calves away, and right now she's the only one in milk. Now that a small group of do-gooders has made raw milk sales illegal in SD, I need at least one of them in milk at all times. Cricket will be calving mid-September, and then I can sell Taz and let Bandit dry off. I'd rather she was pregnant, though.
For those of you who are newer and don't know me or my situation, just to make a few things clear, we live in a climate that is colder than Alaska in the winter and hotter than Texas in the summer (well maybe not THIS summer, but we're close). Bandit weighs almost 1,500 pounds, which means in the winter, she eats close to a bale and a half (60 pound bales) of hay, which costs me $5.00 a bale. That comes out to $225.00 PER MONTH, just to feed one of my cows. Spending that much money to feed a dry, open cow is folly, in my opinion (and since it's my money I'm talking about). Rich and I live on his meager disability income, so you can see even keeping these cows is a financial hardship. We do it because we want the quality of food they can give us (milk, cheese, butter, etc.) and because we love them. But feeding them with nothing coming back in return is just not something I want to do. They need to at least pay PART of their own way. Being family cows, and given how much we have to spend for hay, they'll never pay ALL their own way, but I love them, so I don't insist on that.
Bandit has had three calves for me, and never had a problem calving. She pushed a bit longer with the second one, but this last one whooshed out and I missed it. There were no complications whatsoever. She has always come into heat between 10 to 14 days after calving, and then cycled every 19 days after that. I would track 2 or 3 of her regular heats and then take her to the bull. I can't leave her with the bull for an extended period because I need the milk. That's why I give her the hormone shots. I need to know WHAT DAY she's going to come into heat, so I can take her over the day before and bring her back the day after. Maybe some of you have different circumstances than mine, so my method might seem silly to you, but for me, it's the way it has to be. I'll be the first to admit, she doesn't always settle with the bull the first time. There was one time she didn't, and then because of weather considerations, I had to wait 6 months to take her back, so she was dry a LONG time that time.
Now, as to the rest, I THOUGHT what I had was Lute, but I went and peered at the tiny label on the bottle, and it is in fact EstroPlan, so I guess the 2 cc dose was correct. It's entirely possible that she came into heat during the night, but NORMALLY her heats last longer than a few hours. There's at least one milking, morning or evening, prior to or following standing heat, when it's dangerous to even THINK about bringing her in to milk because she and Cricket are so busy mounting each other. Then there's the blood. She bleeds off 48 hours after she's in standing heat. EVERY TIME. So far, even if I missed the mounting part, I've seen nary a drop of blood from her, much less mucus. So I'm thinking she's not going into heat.
I always get confused about the two types of ovarian cysts, but when we first bought her, she was supposedly bred. She never had a heat, and she just got bigger and bigger. Well, come to find out she was just getting fat on grass, but we thought she was pregnant because there was no heat cycle. Finally, two months after her expected date (she was pasture bred, so it was kind of vague), a neighbor came over and palpated her. In the process, she jumped and got away from him. Two weeks later, she had a heat and a bleed-off. The vet told me that she'd probably had a cyst that the neighbor inadvertently popped when she jumped. On her next cycle after that, we took her to the bull, and she settled right away. Since then, it's been no problem. She calves, she starts having heats, we take her to the bull, she gets pregnant, and 9 months later there's a calf.
I guess what I'm saying is it's easy to generalize and say "most such-and-such cows do so-and-so," but I have A cow, and she has a history, however short that history might be. So I'm trying to figure out now why she's not behaving in the manner she would normally behave.
I don't know whether to call her beef or dairy, because she's half Jersey and half Hereford. I've never had a pure dairy cow - Bandit's my first cow - so I don't know how the majority of dairy cows behave. I know the beef guys around here do exactly as Heather said - they put a bull in with the cows and calves, then take him out a couple months later. I've never sat and counted heads, but there sure are a lot of calves out on the pastures in April and May, so that MUST work, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
I suppose in the end, I'll end up hauling her to the vet and having him check her out, but I'd like to avoid that if I can. Our Durango BARELY has enough oomph to pull that big steel trailer with Fat Miss Bandit in it, not to mention the fact that it will cost $80 just in gas to go there and back, plus whatever the vet charges. So it's not something I want to do on a whim. I'd like to try every other thing possible that I can do myself before I have to resort to that. Does that make sense?
~Lannie
Joann, we want to get rid of the devil spawn we call Taz this fall. He's not tame in any sense of the word, and won't BE tamed. He injures me almost every day, and I don't want to put up with him any longer than I have to. Bandit has a bad habit of drying herself off when I take her calves away, and right now she's the only one in milk. Now that a small group of do-gooders has made raw milk sales illegal in SD, I need at least one of them in milk at all times. Cricket will be calving mid-September, and then I can sell Taz and let Bandit dry off. I'd rather she was pregnant, though.
For those of you who are newer and don't know me or my situation, just to make a few things clear, we live in a climate that is colder than Alaska in the winter and hotter than Texas in the summer (well maybe not THIS summer, but we're close). Bandit weighs almost 1,500 pounds, which means in the winter, she eats close to a bale and a half (60 pound bales) of hay, which costs me $5.00 a bale. That comes out to $225.00 PER MONTH, just to feed one of my cows. Spending that much money to feed a dry, open cow is folly, in my opinion (and since it's my money I'm talking about). Rich and I live on his meager disability income, so you can see even keeping these cows is a financial hardship. We do it because we want the quality of food they can give us (milk, cheese, butter, etc.) and because we love them. But feeding them with nothing coming back in return is just not something I want to do. They need to at least pay PART of their own way. Being family cows, and given how much we have to spend for hay, they'll never pay ALL their own way, but I love them, so I don't insist on that.
Bandit has had three calves for me, and never had a problem calving. She pushed a bit longer with the second one, but this last one whooshed out and I missed it. There were no complications whatsoever. She has always come into heat between 10 to 14 days after calving, and then cycled every 19 days after that. I would track 2 or 3 of her regular heats and then take her to the bull. I can't leave her with the bull for an extended period because I need the milk. That's why I give her the hormone shots. I need to know WHAT DAY she's going to come into heat, so I can take her over the day before and bring her back the day after. Maybe some of you have different circumstances than mine, so my method might seem silly to you, but for me, it's the way it has to be. I'll be the first to admit, she doesn't always settle with the bull the first time. There was one time she didn't, and then because of weather considerations, I had to wait 6 months to take her back, so she was dry a LONG time that time.
Now, as to the rest, I THOUGHT what I had was Lute, but I went and peered at the tiny label on the bottle, and it is in fact EstroPlan, so I guess the 2 cc dose was correct. It's entirely possible that she came into heat during the night, but NORMALLY her heats last longer than a few hours. There's at least one milking, morning or evening, prior to or following standing heat, when it's dangerous to even THINK about bringing her in to milk because she and Cricket are so busy mounting each other. Then there's the blood. She bleeds off 48 hours after she's in standing heat. EVERY TIME. So far, even if I missed the mounting part, I've seen nary a drop of blood from her, much less mucus. So I'm thinking she's not going into heat.
I always get confused about the two types of ovarian cysts, but when we first bought her, she was supposedly bred. She never had a heat, and she just got bigger and bigger. Well, come to find out she was just getting fat on grass, but we thought she was pregnant because there was no heat cycle. Finally, two months after her expected date (she was pasture bred, so it was kind of vague), a neighbor came over and palpated her. In the process, she jumped and got away from him. Two weeks later, she had a heat and a bleed-off. The vet told me that she'd probably had a cyst that the neighbor inadvertently popped when she jumped. On her next cycle after that, we took her to the bull, and she settled right away. Since then, it's been no problem. She calves, she starts having heats, we take her to the bull, she gets pregnant, and 9 months later there's a calf.
I guess what I'm saying is it's easy to generalize and say "most such-and-such cows do so-and-so," but I have A cow, and she has a history, however short that history might be. So I'm trying to figure out now why she's not behaving in the manner she would normally behave.
I don't know whether to call her beef or dairy, because she's half Jersey and half Hereford. I've never had a pure dairy cow - Bandit's my first cow - so I don't know how the majority of dairy cows behave. I know the beef guys around here do exactly as Heather said - they put a bull in with the cows and calves, then take him out a couple months later. I've never sat and counted heads, but there sure are a lot of calves out on the pastures in April and May, so that MUST work, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
I suppose in the end, I'll end up hauling her to the vet and having him check her out, but I'd like to avoid that if I can. Our Durango BARELY has enough oomph to pull that big steel trailer with Fat Miss Bandit in it, not to mention the fact that it will cost $80 just in gas to go there and back, plus whatever the vet charges. So it's not something I want to do on a whim. I'd like to try every other thing possible that I can do myself before I have to resort to that. Does that make sense?
~Lannie