Learning how to handle cows and rearing young heifers

How to handle cows is harder than I thought! They have minds of their own and like to do anything but do what you tell them to... Tell them to go one way, they'll find any excuse/way to go the opposite way. Some tips I've picked up from working at the farm when handling them is to make yourself as big and 'scary' as you can whilst flailing blue sticks around! It's all fun though and I really love working with the cows especially learning all about the general husbandry of these animals. My main responsibility on the farm is to help maintain the young calves (heifers) that Jeff gets on his farm every few weeks.

The process goes as follows:

• The cows come at about 3-4 weeks old, and are fed on milk (heifer-lac twice a day) and small cow cake that gives them all the nutrients/calcium that they need to grow in the early stages of their lives. 
• As they get older they get de-horned (see prev. blog post) and de-teated to make sure they are okay to be introduced into the milking process- because if they were to have an extra teat it would be disrupt  the process. 
• They stay on milk for a few weeks but slowly they don't drink it as much and gradually get weaned on to just having small cow cake. 
• Eventually they have a mixture of big and small cow cake to get them used to what they will be having in the future until finally going on to the big cow cake. 

Following this process my favourite part is probably the constant stream of calves that come through as it gives me so many jobs to do on my weekly day on the farm (Sundays) 

Here are some pictures of the milk feeding process. 

You tend to mix 2 jug fulls of powder with a bucket of hot water that has to be at least 30degrees