ok for calf to nurse off of 1st calf heifer?

[mossyoaks]

Hi there,

I have a 6yr old cow and her 2yr old heifer that calved a day apart 2 weeks ago. Both heifer calves are eating, pooping and peeing well and very active, bouncing around playing, etc.

The 6yr old is very firm about only letting her calf nurse off of her. But, the 2yr old lets both calves nurse. The other calf doesn't latch on for serious nursing like she does for her own dam. Just the occasional short duration suckle.

Given that the 2yr old is in her first lactation and doesn't have as much milk as she will in later lactations, should I separate them to make sure that her calf's milk supply isn't depleted? Or, is it no big deal as long as her calf remains active, continues to grow out and doesn't look like she's hungry all the time? Will her milk supply just grow to accomodate both the needs of her calf as well as the 'double dipping' of the other calf?

Thanks!

Kimberly

[Gorignak]

Look....I DON'T know the answer to your question. And, having opened similar threads concerning milking and milk consumption, and calf growth, and duration with little response and no sound data....I do know this......

You have a perfect laboratory with a very good experiment in place. A 400 lb digital scale from Sam's Club costs about $60. By confining the calves to their dams, and recording their weights weekly, you will acquire data that will be invaluable in making decisions later.... BUT, your data will indicate general milk output and available growth rate. You will still be limited in knowing for sure IF the calf (x2) grew at their potential.

I have a 36" first calf heifer that lost her bulldog calf. She milked 2 gallons / day for 4 months, a gallon and a half / day for another 3 months, a gallon / day for three months....and now in her 11th month she is sill giving 2 quarts / day.

I have a non Chondro 42" Bessie that had a 45 lb calf that gained 2.25 lbs / day, which (the calf) then died of hardware disease because she was eating anything she could get her mouth on, due to the cows output declining precipitously....which we were unaware of. The calf weighed about 315 lbs at 115 days old !!!! That cow's output HAD to be over 2.75 gallons / day....we were also acclimating her to stanchion milking by feeding her 3 lbs /day of Alfalfa pellets. We took anywhere from a pint to a quart each day.....her output for 3.5 months was staggering....THEN IT DROPPED OFF DRAMATICALLY. We weighed the calf weekly.

So....what do you want to learn....there is data to be mined in your setup....or you could just be content with no deterioration and not learn a thing. We paid dearly for our lessons...I value them tremendously.

Mike

[Gorignak]

Your icing of outrage over the layer cake of anecdotal and hyperbolic information would be amusing if it were not so damaging.

Your references are suspect, your sources are unreliable, and your conclusions are self serving and just too "aw shucks" for the real world.

You take an anecdotal observation from antiquity and suggest to someone who could be severely damaged by its implementation that they should cast caution to the wind and "Follow Me".

As was the "...small Irish Peasant Farmer's livestock", myth challenged....THIS MYTH IS BEING CHALLENGED BY MORE THAN MYSELF. You do not have calf weight data.....milk output data.....or current observations of a Dexter cow "nursing 4 calves".

"The calf is doing fine....." IS NOT DATA !!!!

Poppycock....and treated justifiably as such.

PLEASE PEOPLE.....THERE ARE TWO OTHER THREADS BEGGING FOR ANY MILK OUTPUT DATA AVAILABLE. Why is this so hard. Calf gain data is valid, if timely....BUT, it does not answer the question of "full potential" . It does quantify milk output.....10 lbs milk = 1 lb calf according to dairy cattle data. I do realize that the gain rate may differ slightly for Dexters.

My ante.....Sassy.....2.25 lbs gain daily.....measured weekly.
Who's in the game ??

[marion]

Hi Kimberly, If they were mine, I would separate them so that the first-calf heifer was sure to be nursing only her own calf. Gene, most multiple-suckling situations are managed, not simply 'let's hope the calves all get enough and maybe the cow won't get too dragged down'. marion

[copperhead]

My main concern with a calf nursing to other cow is that she is more succeptable to milk fever, I have had cows go down because they were very accomadating to the other calves in the pasture, so you might want to watch the heifer pretty close, or, if you have the facilities separate them.