halter training
-
debra wiltshire
- Posts: 123
- Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2004 12:57 am
- Location: Lincs/Leics border
- Contact:
following on from 'untrained cattle' I would be interested to know how different people approach halter training...our view it certainly helps if you can catch and tie up and lead from field to field if needed. Having been carted accross a field which ended in my perfectly executed foward roll by a heifer that we thought we had halter trained...perhaps we need to find out what we are doing wrong!
Debra Wiltshire
Cosmos Dexters,
Lincs/Leics border
Cosmos Dexters,
Lincs/Leics border
Hello Debra,
I am not sure if my info will be a help (There is a bit of a difference between the ways our two countries breeders 'handle' cattle) but you are welcome to it.
...I only halter train those cattle I am intending to take to a show workshop - show - or some place I will need to lead them at... this is something that I have only started to do reciently (last couple of years)
...All of my females are quiet enough to walk amongst and all are trained to come into a milking shed/head bale but I do not try to move cattle seperately from the mob ... that is to say if I need to cut an animal from the mob to treat it or change its paddock then this is done in the yards - or between paddocks - not with a halter.
...As to training I tend to do it after weaning ...this is done by putting on the halters and tying them up (usually in pairs so they have another animal with which to share the experience and so they feel 'safer' and therefore get less stressed) ... with the calves which have been used to being restrained in the milking shed this is not a great stress but with those (bull/steer calves) which have been running on their mothers this can be a fast learning curve for them. Basically the animal relies on you for all its food and water ... so it gets used to being walked to the water trough and you comming to feed it and that is about the jist of it ... with more experience the animal comes to learn that the ordeal of being shown is not so terrible after all!
...Finally I must note that tho my older cows have never been halter trained I have on occasion put a halter on them and found to my surprise that they will walk happily on it BUT they do not walk like a trained show animal they walk ahead of me as if I was moving them normally with just the added insurance of the halter and lead ... the reason I have had to do this is because I have had to take cows in milk- with calf- to Dexter feild displays (not shows)...so I think that an animal used to you -and not afraid- will behave itself
So maybe your experience with your heifer may have been just that ...that she did not want to leave her herd/mates and she was not sure of what you were going to do with her and thus she was startelled and took you on a merry little ride...and that it may not even be that you have halter trained her 'wrong' but that it was just the situation that made her 'unmanagable'.
All the best
Kathleen
I am not sure if my info will be a help (There is a bit of a difference between the ways our two countries breeders 'handle' cattle) but you are welcome to it.
...I only halter train those cattle I am intending to take to a show workshop - show - or some place I will need to lead them at... this is something that I have only started to do reciently (last couple of years)
...All of my females are quiet enough to walk amongst and all are trained to come into a milking shed/head bale but I do not try to move cattle seperately from the mob ... that is to say if I need to cut an animal from the mob to treat it or change its paddock then this is done in the yards - or between paddocks - not with a halter.
...As to training I tend to do it after weaning ...this is done by putting on the halters and tying them up (usually in pairs so they have another animal with which to share the experience and so they feel 'safer' and therefore get less stressed) ... with the calves which have been used to being restrained in the milking shed this is not a great stress but with those (bull/steer calves) which have been running on their mothers this can be a fast learning curve for them. Basically the animal relies on you for all its food and water ... so it gets used to being walked to the water trough and you comming to feed it and that is about the jist of it ... with more experience the animal comes to learn that the ordeal of being shown is not so terrible after all!
...Finally I must note that tho my older cows have never been halter trained I have on occasion put a halter on them and found to my surprise that they will walk happily on it BUT they do not walk like a trained show animal they walk ahead of me as if I was moving them normally with just the added insurance of the halter and lead ... the reason I have had to do this is because I have had to take cows in milk- with calf- to Dexter feild displays (not shows)...so I think that an animal used to you -and not afraid- will behave itself
So maybe your experience with your heifer may have been just that ...that she did not want to leave her herd/mates and she was not sure of what you were going to do with her and thus she was startelled and took you on a merry little ride...and that it may not even be that you have halter trained her 'wrong' but that it was just the situation that made her 'unmanagable'.
All the best
Kathleen