There is no question about it, calves are adorable. Their cute noses, their springy step, their curiosity mixed with that timidness.
Adorable!
But, what do you do when Momma cow is growing a new baby and will need to devote her strength to the new calf rather than continuing to nurse the current one?
While I know some farmers who leave nature to itself and rely on the momma cow to do the weaning, that doesn’t always work. Unfortunately, I have seen many cases where an adult bovine is shoving a calf out of the way to nurse the momma, leaving the calf getting injured or weakened from lack of nutrients.
The tried and true method is to assist with the weaning.
I know nothing about using weaning nose rings, so I’m not even going to touch on that. What I like to do is the traditional separating the calf and momma routine.
The typical age to wean a calf is six to eight months. Some people go as early as early as four and I’ve seen instances where some people held off until closer to nine months. Four months is a bit early, but if there is a reason you need to wean the calf right away, it can be done.
You should not wait past nine months to wean as there is a tendency for the calf to pick back up on nursing the momma cow when she is lactating again. They even tend to do this regardless of how long they are separated for weaning. I don’t fully understand the why’s on that, but can say that that is what I’ve noticed.
Awhile back, I heard that separating the cow and calf so that they couldn’t see each other would help to keep bawling at a minimum. In the years where we tried this, I did find that the calf and momma cow did bawl less. So, if you are planning to sell the calf, now is a perfect time.
In general, we like to keep the cow and calf in adjacent pastures. There may be more bawling, but the stress levels seem to be lower. Less weight loss on either end, more willingness to eat, coat remains shiny, and so on.
As far as duration, you definitely want to wait for the momma cow to dry up. By two weeks, she should be dry. If you wait at least a month to two months, this will create enough of a separation that the calf won’t try to nurse again or the cow will reject the calf when it tries to nurse (particularly because the cow is dry.)