Raising Jane – 6 months

My hopes for Jane are that she will live a full, and productive life as a milk cow.  Her mom, Della, birthed 11 calves in her 12 years – the last two births were assisted – other than that, she never really experienced much in the way of health problems.  Her calves, Softie, *Deverell, Dale, *Delta, Dean, *Jetta, Keith, Brooks, unnamed stillborn twins, & *Jane.  Out of  4 *heifers, Jane is the only one still here.  Deverell got injured in the feeding shed as a long yearling and never really was right, Delta wouldn’t wean her calves, so I culled her, Jetta, well, you know how that turned out…and we’re still waiting for Jane to grow up.

If Della were alive and raising Jane, she would have allowed her to nurse about 9 months before weaning her.  I will do the same, by feeding her milk replacer until about that age.  Most likely until she sheds out in the spring.  Milk replacer is not anywhere near the quality of raw whole milk.  But, I think she is doing good for an orphan calf.  By taking photos of her every month I can see how much she is progressing.

May – 1 day.

June – 1 month.   ” Look ma – no horns!”

July – 2 months.

August – 3 months.

September – 4 months.

October – 5 months.

The rest of the photos were taken this past week at age 6 months.  Jane measures 46 inches at the hip, and has a heart girth of 55 inches, and she measures 55 inches from poll to pins.  I can’t find my dairy weight tape, so using the formula:  heart girth x heart girth x length ÷ 300 will give me an approximate weight.  55 x 55 x 55 ÷300 = 555 pounds, or looking on a chart depending on which usually goes by heart girth, she would weigh somewhere around 500 pounds, if I were to venture a guess, I think the 500 pound estimate would be close.  She is tall and lanky.  I am not trying to achieve any particular weight or size with her, I just want her be growing at a steady rate.  I plan to breed her to calve at age two, so she needs to be at about 2/3 her mature weight at breeding.

My girls.

Besides steady growth, I watch her manure to see if I need to dial back or add different feedstuffs.  Her diet consists of full pasture (when it isn’t under snow), free choice grass hay, 2 one gallon milk replacer feedings, 1/2 to 1 pound of organic grain per day and free choice minerals.  I will introduce roots when our grass is finally frosted for good.  And yes, I am feeding her grain – if she was not eating fake milk, but true milk with uncooked proteins and fat, I would not.  This is where the die-hard grass-fed only has to stop.  If your animal needs a boost, it needs a boost.  I am not keeping any secrets here, because while I sell grass-fed beef, that doesn’t mean that I believe grain feeding is wrong on a condiment type scale for a situation like this.  There are lots of skinny dairy cows out there suffering because they aren’t getting grain, and just as many being purported as grass-fed only while still getting grain/seeds.

Perfect.

In addition to watching her manure, looking at her coat can tell a lot too.

Looking at her coat and getting a good photo of it are two different things.  She is a friendly, calm calf right now, without too many of the usual bucket calf behaviors.

What you want to see is hair that lies flat for the most part, even with a winter coat.  Not puffy, or curled.  If you see those things you need to up the energy in the feed and dial in the minerals.  Jane has a nutritionist friend who is helping with mineral part.  A mineral change a few months ago smoothed her coat out except in the barrel area, which is always a problem area in our region.  It may be in others too, I just don’t know about other regions.  Strive for good-looking, not perfect.  Jane has good slick hair on her face and neck so with just  a problem area or two, so I am doing an OK job.  Another indication of health is cleanliness.  Tail clean? No crusted manure etc.  You know how a dog gets dirty and then in an hour they are clean, it has to do with coat condition or in simpler terms, if the animal has good working adrenal glands, all systems are thought to be in working order too.  The coat is just what we can see the easiest to assess health, and Jane smells good too, if she was sick she wouldn’t have that “line-dry” cow scent.   I can attest to that, she has had two tummy aches, and during those times, she had slight diarrhea and her nose dew was smelly as was her coat.  All health begins in the gut, so good feeding protocol is very important for long-term health.  A side note too about minerals, if you buy your feed in you may have to adjust/change minerals more than I do to compensate for the different growing conditions/fertilizer methods where your feed was grown.  The bulk of Jane’s daily food intake is from grazing and our hay, making it easier for me to stick with the same minerals without tweaking too much.

Sweet baby Jane isn’t such a baby anymore!

Advertisement