Baby animals are so cute! Especially farm animals. Yes, we have another group of calves down on the farm. Jersey bull calves to be exact. In the video below, I show how we set up the barn for living and feeding these calves when they are still in the stage of drinking milk. They will need bigger quarters later when they are weaned.
Yep, we are pretty proud of our little herd. They are very tame at this point as they have been petted and fussed with. But, that won't last forever. They are actually just getting their horns in so that will be the next step to dehorn them. Now, I know people think that is the most inhumane thing a person can do to the animals but we do have our reasons for doing this. First, it is dangerous for us to be around the cattle if they do have horns. They are already using their heads to butt us around and if they did have horns we would be gored. We will do our best to stay out of the pen when they get older like I said, but accidents can happen when we run in there with feed or plop a bale in the outside pen where we come into close proximity of the animals. Second, they can do a lot of harm to each other. We don't need them to gore each other and then have to deal with wounds and infection. By dehorning we are protecting them and still allowing them to butt heads on occasion. Third, it prevents them from getting their heads stuck in fences or stations. Out in the wild, there are no fences and so they don't have to worry about it. But, we have fences here meaning that the cattle don't have to protect themselves from predators but do need protection from getting horns/heads stuck in places!
I sure hope you enjoyed my video and comment below about your cattle herd and ideas you have for living and feeding quarters.
No comments:
Post a Comment