Curious Calves

May 11, 2011 
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Every time we are in the pasture the calves must see what we are up to.  

These are two Dexter calves.  Harry, the calf on the left has quite a personality and is a sneaky and ingenious milk thief.  He is his momma’s first calf and she didn’t give much milk so he quickly learned to mooch off of any other lactating cow.  Cows generally don’t let other calves nurse off of them, but Harry learned that if he waited for a calf to start nursing he could sneak up behind and nurse from the back without the cow knowing.  Now that he is older it is really funny to watch him because when any calf starts nursing Harry is on the alert and gallops across the pasture to get his snack.  The first time I saw him stealing milk it was actually from a 2 year old heifer that didn’t have a calf , had never had a calf, and was not bred–she still let him suck on her for some unknown reason.  And, apparently the sucking caused some kind of lactation because she developed a small bag–I had heard this could happen but had never seen it with cows or seen a cow with no calf allow one to suck on her–apparently Harry has a very persuasive personality.

(It always cracks me up when they lick their nose out like this :b  )

In this picture the dun calf is the Dexter calf from the above picture and the red calf is a half Dexter half Red Poll calf.  They are either black or this red/dun color depending on the Dexter bulls genetics.  If this calf was a full blood Red Poll its nose and skin would be a red/pink color instead of black nose and skin like this calf.  So far we have been very pleased with these crosses which grow very well.  We are hoping to keep a heifer and see how much milk she produces to possibly use as a milk cow.