Things that make you go "Hmm ..."

[willowgirl]

Had a heifer calve at work; she had lost her yellow ear tag, but according to her steel tag, she was #1112.

Thought all was well and good until the next week, when a heifer with ear tag #1112 calved. And of course, THAT one had lost her steel tag!

What do to, what to do ... ?

I guess we have a couple of weeks to figure it out before the tester visits.

[shellymay]

Double check the steel tag on the first heifer might of been a 1113 or 1115,
 hope it is as simple as that

Other then that you will have to figure out the age and what year those numbers
were assigned...Assuming she was born on that farm.

[willowgirl]

Already double-checked the steel tag -- they can be hard to read on a wiggly heifer! -- but no such luck.

Yes, all our heifers are born here. We could check to see which ones have calved in, and which ones are still in the heifer barn, and find a missing number ... but usually what the boss does in these cases is to just assign an out-of-sequence number on test day. We have a #1 in the herd already, and I suspect she'll become #2 (or Pretty Baby, her name according to me).

I do think the one with the yellow tag 1112 is "the real" 1112, or the calf born to 1026, as she looks JUST like her mother! I looked at the numbers of the dams who gave birth around the same time, but couldn't find one with a striking resemblance to Pretty Baby.

[willowgirl]

Another oddity ... we have a pretty little first-calf heifer named Priscilla who apparently likes to play the choking game! No kidding. We have a 'man gate' made of steel piping at the top of the parlor, which also serves as a funnel to direct the cows into either side. When it's getting around her turn to be milked, Pris likes to press her neck up against it until she starts choking. She'll stand there coughing for a couple of minutes, then she'll go back to pressing her neck against the bars until she asphyxiates herself again. It is the weirdest thing! She must get some kind of enjoyment out of it, because she does it all the time.

Cows are strange ...

[gracielagata]

The choking things reminds me of horses and cribbing and wind sucking... do cows partake of those behavior quirks/addictions as well?

[willowgirl]

No, generally not ... and this is the only cow I've ever seen do this. She is a special snowflake!

[gracielagata]

That was what I figured you would say. An odd one indeed, then, huh?

[willowgirl]

Yup! She was doing it again tonight. I heard a cow coughing and figured it was her ... sure enough! If I had a camera phone, I would have grabbed a shot. She is a happy little heifer ... she doesn't seem at all distressed when she does it. Most of the cows stick to just scratching their heads on the piping, but not this one!

[willowgirl]

Here's another one. This is a little graphic, so skip over if you're eating. lol

Last night I went to breed a first-calf heifer. It was her first time being inseminated. When I stuck my left arm in, I felt an elongated mass, somewhere between the size of an orange and grapefruit. I perceived it to be in the floor of her rectum or, perhaps, the roof her vagina. I couldn't feel her birth canal or cervix through it! Very weird. After fishing around in there for a few minutes, I gave up and called my boss. He gloved up and went in. Initially, he did the same thing I did ... tried to go up and over the mass, and couldn't, so he went underneath it instead, and was able to feel her cervix and complete the insemination. He said he has encountered a couple of cows like that over the years. I've been breeding for almost four years now, and never felt anything like it.

It will be interesting to see, if she doesn't settle to this breeding, if she's still like that in the next round.

Thankfully the second cow I bred last night (good old Betsy) was entirely normal!

The heifer freaked me out a little. lol

[manygoatsnmore]

Sept 30, 2015 5:59:14 GMT willowgirl said:

Yup! She was doing it again tonight. I heard a cow coughing and figured it was her ... sure enough! If I had a camera phone, I would have grabbed a shot. She is a happy little heifer ... she doesn't seem at all distressed when she does it. Most of the cows stick to just scratching their heads on the piping, but not this one!

She obviously didn't see the PSA - the choking game kills.  Although, I guess she'd have a hard time choking off both carotids at once, lol.  She DOES sound like a special snowflake - maybe she needs her name changed to that.

[katievt]

Sept 30, 2015 5:59:14 GMT willowgirl said:

Yup! She was doing it again tonight. I heard a cow coughing and figured it was her ... sure enough! If I had a camera phone, I would have grabbed a shot. She is a happy little heifer ... she doesn't seem at all distressed when she does it. Most of the cows stick to just scratching their heads on the piping, but not this one!

I mentioned it to my husband last night.  He wondered if she's trying to get her cud to come up?  He's seen cows choke themselves and that's what they seemed to be doing.

[willowgirl]

That's an interesting theory. I watched her closely last night when she was going through her routine, but she didn't seem to produce a cud at the end of it. It was more like, "Scratch head on pipe, choke self for awhile, lick out nostrils."

I really think it is some sort of fetish, like the cows who stick out their tongues and twirl them around for their own private amusement. Cows are weird!

And yes, she is a white cow, so she could have been named Snowflake, LOL. But we had 3 mostly white heifers freshen in close together, and they ended up being named Peanut, Petal and Priscilla (she is Priscilla). We already have a Snowy, Bianca and Blondie. Black-faced cows get names like Inky, Shadow and Cinder.

[copperkid3]

Sounds like the best name would be something like: Suicidal Sal.

So.....does she watch any bovine autoerotic asphyxia films*?










*(I can just imagine someone placing that phrase into their web search engine and coming to this site.) SMH...

[willowgirl]

More things that make you go, "Hmm..."

The cow with the worst-looking udder in the herd was also our top producer, registering 134 lbs. on Tuesday's test.

I guess I can overlook the fact that she has one quarter that is twice the size of all the others ...

[PNP Katahdins]

Willow, did you ever solve the eartag problem from the first post? I've had the same kind of missing eartag problems with the sheep and they usually resolve at lambing time.

Peg

[willowgirl]

Yes, we figured out that heifer 1113 had been given 1112's steel tag.

Also, the first-calf heifer with the weird reproductive tract settled on that first breeding! Betsy (the other cow bred that night) settled, too.

[barefootfarmer]

willowgirl, Your cow that chokes herself made me think of something that two of my Brown Swiss cows like to do. They push their forehead against something hard, like a wooden post or another cow's rear end. And they go into a trance. Sometimes they drool. First time I saw it I thought my cow was going to die, lol. She had her head pushed up against a corner beam, drool coming down her chin, eyes glazed over. It took some rough pushing to get her to snap out of it. And those two do it all the time. So weird. They must like the zone it puts them in.

[manygoatsnmore]

barefootfarmer, my horse does something like this. She puts her butt up against the wire fencing and leans into it, and just goes off in her own little world. Critters can be so weird!

[aoconnor]

manygoatsnmore, I have a couple of horses who do the same thing. I have always thought it odd. Never heard of a cow doing something similar though...will have to watch my cattle and see if any do this kind of stuff!

[manygoatsnmore]

aoconnor, lol, well, at least if our horses are odd, they are not unique!