Jersey

[TexasJerseyMilker]

These have the classic Jersey faces and bone structure.

I have a heifer that came from a commercial dairy, mostly Holstein. They had some Jerseys in the herd to increase the butterfat of the milk tank. In order to breed and improve my own animals I will select Jersey show bulls because these commercial Jerseys are not really pure Jersey they and have Holstein horse-like faces.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Not only that the mostly Holstien dairy Honeydew came from is Organic (woooo) so they can get a higher price for the milk. I was looking in the dairy case at the grocery store and this grass fed organic is selling for $8 or $9 a quart. People are really working this organic thing.

The profit margin of dairies is so thin they have to do anything they can. One thing about my heifer-- she does not carry organisms that are resistant to antibiotics. I asked them what do they do with cows with mastitis? He said we just put them on the truck.

 

[tex452]

My granddaughters jersey girls.
One has a beefmaster calf, the other a red angus calf, the black calf was grafted, he nurses on both cows.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Yesterday afternoon HoneyDew was having some kind of episode. I found her lying in the breezway of the barn with a high respiratory rate, a panting breath every 2 second like a woman does when in labor. She was making little mm mm sounds. Her vulva was spreading and all pink inside. I thought she was about to deliver.

I put her companion my old cow in the stall next to her for companionship. They can easily interact because it is made or corral panels. Honeydew I had made a box stall across from her deeply bedded with straw but she refused to go in there. So every 2 hours last night I went out to the barn check on her and I found her lying in the straw at 2am, no sign of membranes or calf hooves and not in apparent distress. At 4 am she was up and had stringy mucus on her vulva but no apparent distress. At 6 am she was lying in the straw chewing her cud.

Today she is like nothing ever happened. She is her usual cheerful self. I know that women have braxton hicks contractions. My husband was not excited he says the calf is just repositioning.

 

[MurraysMutts]

Yesterday afternoon HoneyDew was having some kind of episode. I found her lying in the breezway of the barn with a high respiratory rate, a panting breath every 2 second like a woman does when in labor. She was making little mm mm sounds. Her vulva was spreading and all pink inside. I thought she was about to deliver.

I put her companion my old cow in the stall next to her for companionship. They can easily interact because it is made or corral panels. Honeydew I had made a box stall across from her deeply bedded with straw but she refused to go in there. So every 2 hours last night I went out to the barn check on her and I found her lying in the straw at 2am, no sign of membranes or calf hooves and not in apparent distress. At 4 am she was up and had stringy mucus on her vulva but no apparent distress. At 6 am she was lying in the straw chewing her cud.

Today she is like nothing ever happened. She is her usual cheerful self. I know that women have braxton hicks contractions. My husband was not excited he says the calf is just repositioning.

When's her due date?
She was ai'd right?

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

When's her due date?
She was ai'd right?

She is due around May 20, bred AI to a Jersey named Stoney. He has over 4000 daughters. I'm as nervous as a grandma who's girl is fixing to have a baby. Ladies on the keeping a family cow board say this is normal for Jersey first calf heifers. One found her heifer lying flat on the ground moaning and then she popped up like nothing is happening. Another called an emergency vet to make a house call but nothing was wrong.
I'm keeping her in the yard so I can keep an eye on her.

 

[TILLHILL]

I hear that a lot. Lets consider something.
Lets say they have 10 500lb calves to sell. Unweaned calves can loose up to 8 to 10% but lets use.6% to be conservative.
So thats 30 lb per calf times 10 calves so 300lb. Figured at $3 a lb thats $900. More than i make at work in a day. Many of them will take a days vacation to go fishing or hunting but not to haul and sell cattle.
I love buying the overnight calves.

In this part of the country, NE Iowa buyers will hammer day cattle. Bloomington even takes shrink off day fat cattle off your check. But overnight pens on feeders go to hay and water pens till about 4 am when they start sorting. I prefer to deliver cattle 36 hours prior to sale time. 12-16 hours seem to be the most shrink from cattle we have weighed.

 

[farmerjan]

I consider the behavior of your heifer perfectly normal... Yes, I agree that the calf is repositioning and it causes a little discomfort... I have seen discharge anywhere from 24 hours to 3 weeks prior to calving... Relax.... she will surprise you one morning with a new baby.... and all this worrying will be for nothing... Unless the calf tries to come out shaped like a round ball, there is no reason she should have any problems... she was bred jersey, it ought to not weigh more than 50-60 lbs and will dive right out without a second thought.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

This 'false alarm' gives me more time to work on introducing the milking routine twice a day. You would not want to suddenly put a milking machine on a freaking out heifer that just calved. I have a Surge milking machine that hangs under the belly by a strap. Now she tolerates the pump noise, the surcingle over her back and the bucket with the toc toc toc sound of the pulsator. I do not attach to her teats of course. The last couple of trainings she just stands there chewing her cud. After this the equipment is removed and she lead away to her feed trough so this routine is something she looks forward to because feed is next.

 

[Lucky_P]

It is interesting that Jersey cows are so kind and motherly yet the bulls are aggressive and want to kill people.

Some of that aggression may be innate/breed-related, but the bigger issue is that these dairy bulls are pulled from their dam on Day One and hand-reared by humans... and as such have little to no fear or respect of humans - and once puberty sets in, they regard anything not a cow as a potential rival to be killed or driven away. No human alive is a match, physically, for the testosterone-driven mass of bone and muscle that is even a small, 800-1000# Jersey bull.
Would a Hereford or Shorthorn bull, pulled from mom at birth and hand-reared be as dangerous? I don't know.
We see similar issues with hand-reared stallions and intact male llamas... the llama folks call it 'Berserk Male Syndrome'. My rule of thumb: Hand-reared intact males = danger.

 

[TILLHILL]

Some of that aggression may be innate/breed-related, but the bigger issue is that these dairy bulls are pulled from their dam on Day One and hand-reared by humans... and as such have little to no fear or respect of humans - and once puberty sets in, they regard anything not a cow as a potential rival to be killed or driven away. No human alive is a match, physically, for the testosterone-driven mass of bone and muscle that is even a small, 800-1000# Jersey bull.
Would a Hereford or Shorthorn bull, pulled from mom at birth and hand-reared be as dangerous? I don't know.
We see similar issues with hand-reared stallions and intact male llamas... the llama folks call it 'Berserk Male Syndrome'. My rule of thumb: Hand-reared intact males = danger.

I can answer the hand reared beef bull question. Terrible idea to keep them intact. Neighbor did it and seemed fine till about a 3 year old and got worse and worse, ended up killing a guy in the pasture. Even bottle beef babies trying to keep back for show calves get overly pushy and hard to deal with.

 

[farmerjan]

Have a beef bull raised on a nurse cow (cow died) but interacting with people daily. Son's gf made it a pet even as I kept saying that it was not a good idea, but she would not listen and son didn't correct her... now he is a royal PITA.... no respect for fences or people... and I would not trust him as far as I could throw him (so, not at all)... I keep telling them he needs to get sold BEFORE someone gets HURT.....he is out with the rest of the bulls in the bull lot and I would trust any one of them BEFORE I would trust him.....
Have raised 2 jerseys up as bulls... around people but NOT made a pet, they both were used for breeding and then sent for kill after about 2 years... Neither got mean at that time....
I have found that a DAIRY COW can be more dangerous than a bull... a bull will mostly always give you some warning of his disposition... snorting, pawing, something.... a cow can turn on you in a second with no prior warning... especially with a new calf that she doesn't seem to be a problem, then all of a sudden she is trying to put you through a fence or bury you with her head in the ground...

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

That is why I am taking this calf away as soon as Honeydew licks her off. Then Honeydew will easily forget about the calf if it hasn't suckled. I'm already keeping our German Shepherd away because she looks like a wolf. When my husband had the Texas ranch one time he saw some people stop on the road, dump out a dog and drive off. The dog was coming to him across the field when a cow raised her head and quick as lightning chased and crushed the dog to death on the ground.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

In case anyone is interested today I got my old 13 year old cow AIed to Stoney, the same bull Honeydew is bred to.

This morning at 5:30 am I was awakened by banging what I thought were my 2 pet rats in their cage were dragging their cardboard boxes around. I took away the boxes, went back to bed. Then then was even more noise. I looked out and Daphne had a plastic lawn chair hung on her head through the armrest. She was waving it around and trying to rub it off. I got some nippers and cut it off. She was then affectionate towards me, walked away (Honeydew was in the corral) then came back and began to attack the chair ramming it with her head. She went away then came back again to ram the chair. I got a rope and led her to the corral. She immediately tried to mount Honeydew. So I led Daphne away and Honeydew tried to mount Daphne. Daphne just stood there. She was in standing heat that is why she'd gone crazy. So I called the cow AI guy said he could be there at noon . The 'cow pollinator' palpated her first and said her uterus is fine, fallopian tubes were good and cervix is at peak readiness. Daphne has had 7 calves, all were half Angus. I had always wished for a Jersey heifer out of her but this was not to be. She is also fat I didn't think she'd come into heat anymore. She hasn't had a calf in a couple of years. In 3 months I'll do a pee test to see if it took and she has a biscuit in the oven.

He also had a good look at Honeydew. He said her ligaments pelvis to pins had dropped away and her pelvis is loose when she walks. He estimated she would calve tonight or tomorrow. He said she has a hell of a lot of milk.

 

[MurraysMutts]

U actually did it!!

I thought you had mentioned a reason u weren't breeding her. Was it udder related? I can't remember.

Best of luck with her on the deal. I really hope u get your heifer calf!

And pics are a MUST!!

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

In 2016 while I was gone to Oregon for a few months, Daphne was evacuated to an auction yard because of a forest fire. Her big calf was sold off her and she lay in filthy auction yard pens with open teats leaking milk. When I came back I found her with mastitis in all 4 quarters and septic. She had 5 kinds of pathogens in her udder from the auction yard . Her life was saved by shots of Banamine but she lost her back two quarters. One of the pathogens was staph aureus which never goes away, it is just walled off in the milk ducts and flares in every lactation. It can be spread by poor milking hygiene or by calves sucking other cows. Daphne had several more calves after that without problem but they were half Angus and were sold for meat. But I would not have wanted to keep a dairy heifer from her because of Daphne's staff a history. I always wished for a Jersey heifer from her. And now a pure Jersey heifer calf of my dreams can be produced by AI. And ll the heifers calves I raise to sell for family milk cows will be raised on bottles and Daphne dried up.

This morning Honeydew is in labor, no water bag showing yet.

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Heifer calf born at 12:30 pm in a stall bedded with clean straw. Her name is Winona. Honeydew chose this place. My husband attended the birth, pulled membranes off and struck a straw in her nose. All this happened while I was doing the dishes.

 

[MurraysMutts]

Heifer calf born at 12:30 pm in a stall bedded with clean straw. Her name is Winona. Honeydew chose this place. My husband attended the birth, pulled membranes off and struck a straw in her nose. All this happened while I was doing the dishes.

NOW GO GET SOME PICTURES DARN IT!

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Ack what a day. I let her lick the calf off and when she went out of the barn took the calf away because I'm not share milking, I'm bottle raising. Its a good thing I had some store bought colostrum because Honeydew would not let me touch her udder. We tubed the heifer's first feed of colostum two hours after birth and she is warm and dry in the straw and this evening she had a very nice meconium. She is in a stall out of sight of her mother. We will give another colostrum feed a 8:30 tonight.

Honeydew I have been accustoming for a month to the milking routine. She has the Surge belly pail put on her with the pump running and the pulsator pulsing twice a day, not attached to her teats of course and she has behaved well. She is simply tied to the wall, we don't have a stanchion. But we will build one tomorrow because Honeydew has become a wild kicking witch. She tried to kick me dipping her teats. She kicks when I try to hand milk. With the Surge on the surcingle (not attached) she tries to kick it off.

We tied her and as you do to gentle horses we touched her legs with a broom, gently and persistently until she stood still calmly. I put a rubber glove on the broom handle and touched her teats. She never would tolerate it. I took her away she ate some dairy grain, not her full ration. I sprayed some more peppermint spray (Udder Comfort) on her udder and she went out in the excellent grass pasture with my old cow for the night. Poor thing has had a horrible day.

What should I do? I have heard of first calf dairy heifers going crazy.