Weaning Our 4-Month-Old Calf With Ease! ~ PAINLESS METHOD

It's calf weaning day. This means we get to milk twice a day. We were calf sharing and if you want to know how to do that, we have a whole video on how to calf share that I will leave linked. But for those of you who don't know what calf sharing is, it pretty much means that we separate, we have a calf that is nursing on our dairy cow and we separate her for 12 hours at night so that we can milk in the morning. And then we let her have her mama for 12 hours during the day so that she can nurse. So pretty much we get the best of both worlds. We don't have to milk it twice a day. The calf gets milk, so we don't have to bottle feed and, but we still get some milk to keep. Now Patty, the calf that we're weaning today is four months old and this is usually around the time that we like to start the weaning process. The cow is giving a lot more milk to the baby. We're not getting really as much as we need anymore. So it's time. Now on our last steer, a steer was one we did last time. We used a ring that didn't work. It kept breaking. He kept losing it. We had to buy like four or five of them for the entire process. So we're going to try this one this time. So this is plastic. The one that we used before was metal and it has these spikes on it. The metal one did not have spikes on it. It was just like a flat plate. And pretty much what these do is they go in their nose and the one that our last year had, it would just sort of flap over his face when he tried to lift up his head to nurse. But then it would come out when he would bend down to eat grass or hay. So the spikes are supposed to be out and they will, when they poke the mama's udder, because they're trying to nurse, the mom is going to kick the baby off. So, and this is what we needed this time because last time when we took our steers nose ring off, he, uh, started nursing again and the mama cow let him because she wasn't weaned out of nursing him. So this way, marigold or mama cow will be trained not to let them nurse anymore. But he also, he also figured out how to flip up the little guard and nurse. Right. So this way, there's no way that they'll be able to stop the spikes from hitting the mama cow. Even if they flip it, it'll still, it'll still poke. I think it'll still poke marigold in the udder. So either way, this should work. She's also not nearly as like milk, milk driven as the steer was. He was loved his milk. It was pretty much the only thing he lived for. She's not, she's like we can push her off of nursing and she just like walks away. Like it's not a big deal. She doesn't care. So we're going to go catch her, put this in her. We're also going to feed the cows while we're at it. So make this an easy process. And then we're also starting Patty on a feed ration pretty much to make her feel fuller so that she's not like crying all the time that she wants to nurse. You ready? She's getting one last hurrah before we, she just came off cause Josh ran over to get her off. She emptied her. She emptied her and he said her face is covered in milk. So she got her last little nursing session. She's mad at us. Usually she shares food over there with her mama, Marigold. Not tonight. She's all tied up. We got her her own little bit of some feed though. Cause like I said, we want her to feel nice and full so that she's not crying that she wants to nurse cause she thinks that she's hungry. They're fighting over feed. So we tied her up nice and tight to a post. Dad's going to go ahead and put it in the ring. This is dad's job. Makes you do what the spikes out. And they absolutely hate this part because she's going to be trying probably for like 10 or 15 minutes at least to get it out. Well, yeah, we couldn't, oh, she's making some noises at you. She's mad at you. Pretty much. I'm standing here and trying to stop her from kicking. She's trying. She's mad here. Get her up against the gate. Josh, help him hold her up against the gate. No, I got her pretty much. Pretty much. If you can use something to get them up against so that they can't really move. It's better. There's our baby. Whoa, watch out. She's mad. Oh boy. I think she might be worse than Mo. Did you get it? Oh, she's going to try and break it off. She's very mad. Poor girl. He's worked up. He's her, he's her buddy. Oh, watch it. Marigold sometimes gets upset when they moo like that. Oh honey. Oh, watch out. She's, she's upset. I didn't even tighten it yet. No, I know. All the way. All right. It took all of us inside to put the camera down. We had to all get on a side and hold her, but we got it all the way tightened down. We should be good now. Spikes are out ready to poke Marigold when she goes to nurse, which she may not try again for a while cause she just nursed. But now it's going to be a challenge to get her off the halter cause now she doesn't want anyone near her. Poor baby. Hey dad, maybe let Josh try. She's pretty upset with you. I was trying to make sure it's not too tight, but I guess you can't really put it too tight. I don't think you can put them too tight. Maybe you should let Josh try. She's not mad at Josh. Oh, we got it. She's off. We're good. She's very upset. Watch it. She can take off at any time. Yeah, go get her her food. Maybe she'll calm down. Oh, she doesn't want to touch it to anything. Poor baby. Make sure y'all are subscribed and stay tuned and we'll keep you all posted on how this is going with this kind of ring. The last one, it didn't work well. So we'll show y'all how this one goes. So make sure you subscribe to keep updates. If you have any questions or thoughts, make sure you put them in the comments below. Give this video a thumbs up.