All Things Livestock...

[Spiveyman]

Well thanks, that makes me feel much better. I figured you could walk up to a pen and pretty much pick out the winners with a little time looking them over. I'm certain you'll still have better odds than me, but it's good to know that no one's perfect. That's how this lot was. Many of them have been good solid cows, great calves already, plenty of milk, good instincts, good respect for our space, and the physical attributes we're looking for. These are 3 of the cows, minus Jumpy, they always hang out together, Jumpy was always somewhere else:


We really liked that twisty horned cow, at first for her horns mostly, but she is very calm. This is the calf she dropped a few weeks after we bought her. We called him Opie since the only color on his body is the red on his ears. Just like momma.



This is one of the heifers that is really great. She's the one that just walked up on the trailer last night, and walked right into the Dube like she was following a script, and led the other bull calves out into the pasture as soon as we opened the gate, in the dark, on a farm she's never seen before.


And this is the little bull calf from that group, also very well behaved.


We will be better informed on the next purchase, and plan in time to do exactly what you say, keep the good ones, cull the others, and work on breeding our own over time.

 

[texasjohn]

I like the white cow with white calf... very feminine... perhaps more so than the other two. You are already experiencing the heritability of good disposition.. she and her heifer are obviously quite docile... heifer is already earning her keep by leading young stuff thru the working pens.... she'll be a luv for you for a long time, I predict. and looks like many of the rest of the herd is docile as well... getting rid of jumpy will be a big help as well, I predict.

 

[Spiveyman]

It's been an interesting end of the week for me. Thursday night working a handful of cattle I learned a lot. Saturday, however, I got an education.

So, I mentioned how well everything went Thursday. I now know one of the keys to that success was being able to unload them one at a time from the trailer. The first load of the morning Saturday went exactly as the one Thursday night. We had two cows this time, they were the first two on and off the trailer leading the way, and about 5 bull calves. Watching and even interacting with cattle in a field is very different from actually trying to work them in a confined area. Both cows did well, this one was very calm, she just walked into the Dube and stood there while we did what we needed to do:


Next was this young bull calf, Cooper. He's registered and one we plan to use for breeding, albeit on a probationary or trial basis after reading your philisophy Texasjohn. He also walked in calmly and stood there for everything, even the branding. That was actually kind of weird. He already had a tag in his ear from his producer, so I didn't have to put a new hole in. He never flinched when we touched him the first time or gave him the shots. He was started on a halter when we bought him, so that probably helped. When I put the iron on him he never moved. There were maybe 2 or 3 like that throughout the day, but they were the exception. Here's a shot of him and a close up of the brand:



We unloaded the rest of them and took a second trailer back to my partner's farm to get the balance of the herd. We made a couple mistakes at this point. We should have had 3 trailers and/or we should have brought smaller loads and gone back another day. We managed to get all but one cow, and the one steer which we didn't want anyway, in that load, but they were a little over crowded in the trailers. Still they all made it safely to my farm. However because a couple of them went down on the trip and we didn't want to take a chance on them getting trampled in the trilers we let both trailer loads loose in the barn. I don't have any other pictures from this point on because were were working as hard and fast as we could to get them done.

We cut them one at a time from the herd and the next 30 or so went through just fine. Then the big bull (Shooter - the one pictured in my avatar) came through. He walked around, looked at the dube, and then promptly tried to jump over the thing. Crazy! Luckily I had staked it down this time because he didn't make it. You can see from that cow, how tall that chute is. Her head is up and the top bar is still another foot above her eyes. Shooter bounced off and turned around. He didn't get hurt, but he was not going back in. He was never aggressive towards us, but simply walked right passed us to the gate we'd used to cut him out of the herd. We tried to turn him, but he wasn't having any of that. He lowered his head and pushed the gate open (it was only pulled to, hard stop on a post, so he could push it back open to get back in, but the others couldn't have opened it in to get out - if that makes sense. Anyway, that's pretty much where things started going down hill. We had a few more bull calves come through fine, but a couple of them seemed to realize that Shooter didn't have to do it so they started giving us a hard time. Most we could drive to the chute, but two of them refused. One turned around and pretty much did the same thing Shooter did. The other one is psycho, I'm convinced. He tried to run my partner over they day we bought him and unloaded him through his barn. He lowered his head and charged. He's on our crap list, first to die for sure. That thing made very aggressive moves towards us. Aric was standing on the side of the gate that opened so that bull took a flying leap, head first right into that gate panel. Now we had just put it up there to cut animals, it wasn't a permanent deal. Just a few strands of bailing twine on the hing end. The force of that young bull broke the twin and bought the gate completely down. After securing the gate with 2 very heavy chains we tried to get him back in, but he wouldn't go, Shooter took a couple more passes, but wouldn't get in the chute. By this time it was about 10:00 last night. We were tired, sore, and getting a little weary of the remaining few animals, about 6 bulls. We turned them loose in the field with plans to deal with them later.

On the drive back we had a business meeting...

I continue to believe that disposition is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT selection trait... if you can't pen it, you can't even sell it!

Point proven. We are done with Shooter. Out in a pasture he is great. Very calm, does not mind us being around him. You can pet him on the forhead sometimes, feed him by hand, and he's covered the open cows in the field...



...but at the end of the day, even though his pedigree is amazing, he's not worth it. We certainly don't want that influence in the herd. We can't eat him (too old for USDA processing ~ 4 years old), probably couldn't sell him even if we could get him penned up. So, we're going to wait for his winter coat to come in (darker brindling, little bit longer hair) and then we're going to kill him and do another shoulder mount and rug out of him.

This is the psycho bull calf (about 6 months ago, he's much bigger now):


I'm going to throw a rope around him and drag his tail all over the farm, then maybe tie him to a jack. I want to teach him a lesson about acting that way. Once I get him worn out and broke I'm going to get him in the chute and band him. Hopefully that will take some of the crazy out of him until he gets big enough to kill.

It was still a fun day, but we certainly learned the importance of disposition. I also learned I'm not as young as I once was....

 

[texasjohn]

Good story... thanks for the details... been there, done that.

That is, having to deal with pens and set-ups that are less than ideal, wired together stuff... etc. You now realize that each point in the pen set up must be able to withstand the maximum pressure that your largest animal can put on it.... because that is where the animal that WILL test it when you least expect/want it.

It truly is hard to work stuff from a large pen into a chute... as you experienced, it'll work for some critters, maybe all.. but always the least cooperative will hang back or escape until you are left with just the least cooperative jumpy ones... and unless the pen set up is such that they can be cooerced into cooperation, in which case you wouldn't have the problem in the first case, the last ones are where it gets difficult and the probability of people or animals getting hurt goes up greatly.

It sounds like you were trying to get the animals to go into the dube chute sideways, then turn and stand while you closed the side on them (I may have this wrong)... anyway, it doesn't sound to me like Shooter has yet proven to be completely unmanageable. The story may become better when you get an improved pen set up where you can move him from a large pen into successively smaller ones until he is going forward down a chute, then into the Dube chute where he can be restrained. He may be a little spoiled from the experience, but I suggest you can "untrain" him from that experience as follows:

You say Shooter is gentle in the pasture... maybe you can entice him and perhaps one other animal into your large pen set up with a feed bucket..... and just feed the two of them there and leave them overnight (or maybe 30 minutes after they finish eating)... then let them out.. no working. Do this several times....bet he'll start to associate your arrival with feed goodies and head for the pen when he sees you (you want to feed just him and maybe one other cow otherwise ALL the animals will start coming and pressing to get in the gate and your pen setup is not YET set up to handle the whole herd. Then, put the feed bucket in the Dube chute, tie it there with wire/chains... being the herd bull, he'll push the cow out of the way and begin eating there... at first the cow may be the one to go to the bucket, but when he hears/sees her eating there, he'll move in and take over. Done several times, this will habituate him to associating good things with the chute, not bad... after a time, you may discover that you can close the side of the chute and let him stand there eating... don't work him, just let him eat, then release the side gate BEFORE he finishes the feed... thus he will continue to stand there and finish things off... then move naturally and without speed out of the enclosure. At least, if it were me, I'd try this approach before hanging his hide out to dry. So far, Shooter sounds docile, just seeks to test the strength of his enclosure when constrained. I predict that when you have an enclosure that will take all he can give and not come apart that he'll become a "better" bull in your eyes. The key is that he has never been aggressive toward you... just strong when enclosed.

The psycho animal, on the other hand, seems to have demonstrated on more than one occasion a truly aggressive (not bluff) attitude toward PEOPLE.... my experience is this cannot be trained out of the animal...just watch him carefully until he moves on to the dinner plate.

An idea.. cattle are very visual... if they can see clear sky or what looks like a low place in the pen setup, that's where they will try to escape by jumping. An inexpensive/quick method of making your chute area look stronger is to simply hang a heavy tarp or something above the regular pen/chute sides... using a wire or something to support it. The idea is to make the height of the enclosure appear to be taller than it truly is. You need something like a tarp which will flap less in the wind... a sheet will do in a dead calm... but if it starts flapping, then it becomes a scare factor, not just a visual barrier.

The good news is that it sounds like that except for aches and pains y疝l didn't get hurt. That's a good working... and, I expect you have some ideas about how to strengthen the existing set up before you go for working the remaining few animals.

 

[Spiveyman]

So, you're an optimist huh?

That's an interesting idea with Shooter. Our biggest concern with him is that he's learned in the past he can get out by looking upwards for an escape. He was 3 when we bought him and had not had any handling prior to that, and was on a farm with very weak low fences, so all 3 attempts to jump the fence were successful. If he thinks he can get out, he will try. The first thing he did when we came around the corner was go straight into the dube, and jump. Having failed he got flustered and ran back through to where he came from. We were both VERY nervous at that point, no knowing what he'd do. As soon as he learned he could open that gate back up that's what he was going to do. I think if we'd chained that gate closed on both ends he'd have torn right through it. These were not heavy duty gate pannels, they were like the Powder River deals at TSC.

Knowing that he'd look up we did plan for that ahead of time. If you look in the pictures we have extra boards nailed up on the inside of the shed poles up to about 7 feet or so. He could have gotten out if he'd tried, but thankfully he didn't. I really like the idea about the tarps, erasing even the thought that he could get through. There were still some weak points in our set-up, but with a couple of well placed tarps I think that would help. Oddly none of the cattle challenged those spots. We usually tried to stay between them and those spots as they were also our "outs" if anything had gone badly wrong. Of course worst case scenario, I'd still dive through a tarp! But I hope never to be in that spot.

As for working from a large area into a small chute, yes I can see where that is not ideal, and yet 85% of the herd went through there perfectly. That could almost work as a sort as far as I'm concerned. The ones that can do that without a problem are keepers. Granted that was one time. Those same animals might balk a bit more next time. All of the good ones did the same thing, they'd walk up through the side of the Dube and stand there wanting out. The back gate swings into place behind them and catches a ratchet point pretty far out so they are contained in a triangle. They pretty much all turned away from the swinging gate exactly the direction we wanted, then you just close the gates in to squeeze them either forward or backward depending on what we needed to do with them. Due to the design of the chute, there's no way to keep them in a small alley and load them from the end. They have to come in from the side. Having a better way to get them to that point though would be ideal. It would certainly be safer than what we had to do there, and would hopefully make a big difference on the remaining less cooperative animals. With no tagible way to turn around and a strong enough system to hold them, we could probably manage them all, but it sure would be nice to have a herd you could just walk up to and into the side of that thing.

I'm still not sure about Shooter. When you speak of disposition, is that more towards people than towards being confined? Is that why you are thinking he can still be trained? I'd rather not have to train this out of all of his progeny. But if we could make a great bull out of him, it'd sure be nice to have his genetics in the herd. The guy helping us haul did say that was the most gentle herd he's ever worked and he's been doing this for about 50 years. He has 2 cows that he said would kill you if they got a chance. He's the only one that can work them at all, and he has to really watch it. While loading them at my partner's farm a guy stopped by we'd never met before. He saw the trailers pull in and heard us calling the herd down to the barn, so he stopped by to see if he could help out. He was a neighbor up the road at a dairy farm. So we had 4 men in a small barn and closed in about 35 head including: Shooter, about 10 cows, 2 with new calves at their sides, and the balance bull calves from 400 to 700 lbs. They've been on my partner's farm so they know him, I've been around a bit, so they might be familiar with me a bit, but the other 2 were complete strangers, yet we were able to sort and load them into the two trailers with only one problem. One of the little calves got separated from his momma and freaked out. We had to rope him, jump on him, pick him up and literally crack the sliding gate and toss him in. Both of those men said there's no way they could have enclosed their herds with strangers and done that without getting killed. That made me feel pretty decent about the herd.

I'll get to work on Shooter and see what happens. I'd say he's got until about January to become a new bull. That's when his hair will be perfect and our taxidermist will get to see the light of day after deer season.

 

[texasjohn]

I'd say I'm pragmatic..... there's the critter you know and the next one you might get that you don't yet know.

My most primary criteria is that an animal not be aggressive toward people, then they shouldn't jump out of stuff (the stronger the pens and fences the less temptation/chance of success they have, of course), then I look at how they handle/jerk around when in a pen (running into corners, "bulling their way" thru weak areas, etc.

Your indications are that he is NOT aggressive towards people, and that he simply likes to test his boundaries when tightly confined. I think it's worth the effort to convince him that he will not succeed in getting out of tight places until you RELEASE him.

All of the above is a matter of degree. If 6 animals run past you thru an open gate and then you try to stop the 7th by just jumping in front of him and get run over,... this isn't aggression by the animal, just poor judgement on your part. You know when you are the TARGET versus when you are just in the way.

Something jumping out of a waist high pen one time is not a death knell, but if regularly testing 6+ high fences and succeeding, then it's not good.

Any (almost) animal will test their boundaries when constrained. You are the one observing and know how it went... and had already handled (sorry I didn't see the extra boards you put up.. good deal) Shooter's tendency to look up for a way out. You were successful in foiling that by shutting down the visual escape.. you know he could have broken the boards.. but they fooled him. So, as almost every animal will do when they can't go forward, he tried to return from where he came from... and because of your temporary setup he succeeded. I'm viewing that it's entirely possible that some training to get him calmer in the pen... then when it's time to constrain him making sure that he will NOT (I know, nothing is certain, but doing your best, as you did with the boards) be able to put his head down and bust out ... will lead him to "give it up" and be able to be worked in the chute. I've had animals that on one occasion thru the chute will try to jump out.... maybe fall down and get stuck.. kinda have a wreck in there... then the next time I work them they go thru with little to no hassle.... every critter has a bad day from time to time. Give Shooter a chance to become a "good boy."

Given the description of the working, in total, the number of animals, new pen, incompleteness and shortcomings of the pen setup, strangers who had never worked TOGETHER before and whom the cows had not ever seen, I'd give you, your partner AND the herd a score of about 95% .... meaning that all in all the working and its outcome clearly exceeded normal and reasonable expectations for the situation.

I think that Shooter's behavior is LEARNED, not inherent. You say he had never been worked before you got him and turned him loose in low fences where it was easy for him to learn how and succeed after he was full grown. I predict that if his calves are raised with good fences (and electricity teaches young calves RESPECT for fencing) then you will not have any unusual problem with fence jumping offspring. There is always the occasional animal that will be a problem... but I'm talking that statistically I don't feel that his offspring are genetically disposed to be jumpers.

Any very small calf, separated from his mother, is very likely to go bonkers and start banging his self around the enclosure... it's his inbred defense..I had one do it just a week ago, he thinks he is prey and you are the preditor... he's simply trying to get away and FLIGHT is his only option. This is not an indicator of his later mature behavior, I don't believe, unless his MOTHER is also a very nervous, jumpy and standoffish critter. In which case, the boogery genetics are there and this behavior tendency will be reinforced by the behavior of his mother, he'll LEARN this similar behavior from her and he, sure 'nuf, will be very similar.

Re Shooter... you will know within 5 to 8 efforts to get him in the pen and settled down if this is going to work, or not. January may be a date for other reasons, but you will know the answer, I predict, much sooner. You've already got him bought, he is not mean to people, give him a chance to settle down in pens.

 

[Spiveyman]

OK, you're probably not going to be believe me with this story, but I have to tell it anyway. It's kind of like when Lassie tell's Timmy's mom that Timmy fell in the well...

I went out to the farm yesterday to check on the water situation and see how the herd was adapting to their new environment. With it being so dry, we only have one pond watering the herd and the water is so low it won't drain to the trough, we have to pump it out of the bottom of the pond. It's been slowly going down all summer. When I got there the trough was bone dry and much of the herd was standing there looking at me the way my wife does when I make a mess and don't clean it up. "What's the deal here buster?" I went through the gate (we have a fence around the pond) and found two of my cows in the pond. To their tribute they are survivors. No water where they were, so they went and found water, then I saw just how low the pond was and started to get nervous. No rain, and we just went from 20-ish animals drinking from that pond to 70-ish. There's no way we're going to make it on that one pond.

It was about 4:00 and I was looking at what I needed to do: get the cows out of the pond, fix the fence, and get some kind of watering system in place before they start busting through the line fences looking for water. Also, the Farm Service agency has emergency money for water due to the drought and I wanted to go sign up for that. I figured they closed at 5:00 which didn't really give me enough time to do anything. I started up the pump so that they cattle would have water to drink until I got back from town. I threw everything on the tractor and hauled it back to the barn. I pulled up in front of the barn, shut off the tractor and ran inside to see what all I'd need to buy in town (water hoses? float valve for a tank? watering tank? ...etc) I was in there trying to until a bundle of bailing twine we'd used to tie a gate up infront of the tack area and I herd the weirdest "mooo" I'd ever heard. I kind of stopped and got real curious what that was, I walked out of the barn to the sight of my tractor rolling down the hill right towards the electric fence and much of the herd that had followed me back towards the barn. Sure enough Maggie was standing there mooing as if to say, "Tim, you forgot to set the parking break and took it out of gear and now the tractor is about to bust through the fence and run over the calves that aren't smart enough to get out of the way!"

I ran down the small grade and managed to jump on the tractor and hit the brakes just in time to save it. That got the adrenaline pumping for sure. From now on, that thing will be in gear, brakes one, and will probably turn the wheel. Very close call.

I managed to get a 150 gal tank with float, however it's sitting at too much of an agle and the water pours over the front before it gets high enough to shut off the valve. It is sooooo close, but by the time I finished stretching barbed wire and driving T-posts last night it was too late to fool with. I'll have to fix that Thursday. Whew! What a night!

 

[texasjohn]

LMAOROF

1st... TOLD YOU MAGGIE WAS A GREAT COW

2nd... well, you are getting close to gathering enough experiences to call yourself a RANCHER....

3RD.... better copyright the story right now.. else somebody will make it the next country and western hit and you'll be missing out...

I've been there.. done that... all of it... dry tank... pumps, some cows solving the problem their way by by going thru fences... urgent acquisition of water troughs, tilted trough... hard to set the float right.... big muddy mess at the trough, emergency fence repairs....

 

[Spiveyman]

Ha! Yeah, people probably think I'm nuts, but I'm telling you Maggie's a sharp gal. Now I get nervous every time I go through the gate because I swear it looks like she's watching, putting 2 & 2 together, figuring out how to work the latch!

I'm definitely earning my stripes. We took a bull in last night to the slaughter house. We have a system we've developed that has worked very well for us in the past even with some crazy bulls. We're defilitely switching over to only using steers for meat, but we had this one last bull to take in. That daggone thing got off the trailer and started through the gate into the slaughter house, but his horns hit the side. Then he just quit. He wouldn't even try! We've had bulls with much longer horns go through there with no problems, but this guy wouldn't turn his head. So we put the heat to him. Very sparingly at first. He wouldn't budge! So we gave him more juice. Nothing but bellowing from him. Almost THREE hours later we'd pretty much drained 2 hot shots! We even loaded him back up, gave him some more room, tried everything we could think of. Finally we were ready to give up and just take him back to the guy who raised him for us. When he turned around to get back on the trailer I told my partner to close the sliding gate on the trailer and I'd squeeze him in back wards. It worked. We were able to back him through the gate in to the slaughter house. That was the craziest thing I've ever seen, that he wouldn't move forward.

I have a feeling we'll be donating that meat to the local shelter.

I'm heading out this afternoon to fix the watering tank. My plan is to dig a hole so that it will sit down in the hole a good bit. I'd like to help insulate it a bit for this winter. We'll put in real watering tanks in the spring when I can get some assitance, but for now this has to do. The tank does have a heater in it, but I was thinking about trying to get it down in the ground to help. My partner suggested digging a smaller diameter hole underneath it fairly deep. One small enough that it won't slip down into the thing, but deep enough to circulate some warmer air from below to help keep it from freezing up. Does that sound reasonable? Any thoughts there?

 

[texasjohn]

Yep, Maggie is your once-in-a-lifetime cow....

Think of your 3 hours moving a single animal as entertainment... and, it's better than the local movie! Next time, get bring the family and get an even cheaper rate!

Re the water trough. I use metal troughs which have a drain hole in the bottom.... well, I take a piece of pipe, increase the threads on one end until they are about 4-5 inches long, then thread, with teflon tape, this into the drain. Now, I run the SUPPLY pipe into this and the water enters the BOTTOM of the trough.... now, I can either sink the trough a few inches, or pile some dirt up on the supply pipe... either way, the supply pipe stays underground and is less subject to freezing. I use a float valve on a chain (not the metal threaded rod) and place the float in the center of the tank using appropriate lengths of pipe in the tank. Should the top of the tank freeze over and lock the float in place, I simply break the ice, remove frozen chunks and the float again floats and allows water to enter from the bottom. With enough cows on one trough, you'll be surprised how free of ice the tank will stay during the day.... here, if really cold at night, it'll freeze up but stay open during the day.

With a heater, I'd think it would NEVER freeze up. I don't think that digging a hole under the trough would be advisable.... not sure exactly what would happen, but I don't think it's a good idea.