When to wean

[victorfirst]

Hi folks when is the best time to wean,and will i be able to the calves back with them at a later stage?

[Jac]

How long is a piece of string? You will get lots of different answers on this board but here are my views…

General rule of thumb 6/7 months. As we are at the end of the grass season it costs me money to keep sufficient condition on the dams to feed their offspring if they are in working condition going through into winter. I believe it is cheaper to feed a calf than it is to feed the dam to produce milk at this time of year but you should make sure that the calves know what food is (if you are not yet feeding hay/haylage etc) as there is very little nutrition in the grass at this time of year. However, if the dams are carrying good condition then I would leave the calves on the dams as they will do better for even a small amount of milk in any case, the dams will most likely kick them off when they think they are ready.

How long to leave them is a difficult question approx two weeks to dry the dams off but if you return the calves to them after this short time they haven’t forgotten about the milky bar and are a pest.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

As Jac says you will get as many answers as there are systems - I feed nothing but grass, silage or hay to any of the cattle unless they are looking poor - last winter two cows got a bit of coarse mix as they were too lean, but this year they are fine. I have access to lots of old grass, last reseeded 20 or even 30 years ago. I do not use fertiliser either. I hope not to start feeding small bale silage for the main herd till after 1st January. The calves are April or early May born, and will stay with the cows till early March, when they will come inside for some civilisation training, fed nothing but silage or hay. They usually go out again at the end of April. The cows are out all the time unless there are problems at calving when they might be in for a day or two. The steer calves are more often kept separate after the spell inside, but heifer calves are back with the cows by the time bulls go out at the end of June.

I have sometimes just left calves with the cows all the way through, and generally at about 3 weeks before calving you notice that the pairs of cows and calves are not so close as they were, and suckling stops. I have not done this very often, but had no problems with the yearling suckling the cow again when she calved.

Duncan

[Rob R]

As per the above, it depends very much on your system. Spring calvers are best weaned after housing, or moving to winter grazing, but of course we started housing from the end of October last year, and the end of January the year before, according to when there was grass available, so equally there are no hard and fast rules.

The one thing I would advise is not to do two stressful things at the same time, for example housing & weaning. There's bound to be a check in growth at times of stress and this is compaounded if you separate from their mothers and house at the same time. Better to bring them in, allow to adjust for a couple of week and then wean. Last year we moved them into a new building and weaned at the same time, out of necessity, as only one bay had completed, calf-proof feed barriers in, and we couldn't cram all cows and calves into 1/4 of the space so we had to either wean or have calves constantly escaping into the passageway. We opted for the latter and there was a definite check in growth, compounded by the relatively poor forage quality last year.

[Jac]

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The one thing I would advise is not to do two stressful things at the same time, for example housing & weaning. There's bound to be a check in growth at times of stress and this is compaounded if you separate from their mothers and house at the same time.

Yes, that is exactly what I meant to say when I said about 'knowing what food is'. If calves have been out on grass and have never seen hay/haylage before suddenly taking them away from their mothers and putting them indoors on a strange diet is asking for trouble.

[Jac]

And what about weaning weights?

About to wean some of mine - all heifers

n/s 172 days 137 kgs
n/s 180 days 133 kgs
s 179 days 124 kgs

[victorfirst]

Folks thanks for the advice. I have pasture also that has not been fertilised/reseeded in years and the cows look like the the side of a house, so maybe i will leave the calves there untill mum says go away.

[Broomcroft]

We're (usually) 100% grass-only, but our grass is mostly new and good quality/high nutritionally, so we wean as late as possible otherwise the cows get too fat and then I worry about calving issues.

So we're weaning at 8-10 months depending on the state and quality of grazing, forage and the condition of the cows in that particular year. We had one terrible year for forage, I fed my cows hard feed and weaned them earlier, just to keep the cows in reasonable trim. So each year can be a bit different IMO.

We're spring calving only, so now calves could be weaned easily, and they are now nearly as big as their dams, but they are staying with them till about XMas time because the grass is good this year. I'll wean when they come inside in a few weeks time and give the cows 2-3 months off prior to calving again in March/April.