Next Question

[victorfirst]

Hi folks, here is another question in my cow handling education

How do get a freshly calved cow to take on an extra calf? Do you need a calf waiting until she calves or can you try to put one on 24 hours after she calves (ie 24 hours to get one)

By the way daisy up and running about no worse for me pouring milk down her throat after 3 hours, apart from having the skitter after both were put back out to grass

[Mark Bowles]

Up to 24 hrs after she has calved to foster a calf on if she has lost hers, maybe a little longer. I have had a foster calf on a cow 2 hrs after she has had a born dead calf.
Double suckling is something i have never done, maybe you need both calves away from the mother and introduce them to feed 3 times a day, not sure.
I had a 12 year old cow loose a calf at birth yesterday and i have decided to dry her off and avoid the chance of bringing in desease with a foster calf. This cow has done a foster calf for me before.

[ann]

I did a lot of double suckling before BSE but decided to stop as am not prepared to take the risk of bringing problems onto the farm. Occasionally you will get a cow who is happy to accept and extra calf, but most times its a very time consuming operation and not worth all the hassle these days IMHO

[victorfirst]

Well second cow calved last night, so too late to look into now but thanks for the feedback

[Saffy]

I have done quite a bit of multi suckling but always on dairy cows. So they would be milked for the first few weeks and then 4 calves put on, so none were their own calf....so that was different. One wonderful cow - Camelia just loved calves and would always be delighted to see her new babies and wash them all one by one. In fact I would go and fetch her once she had reared them to a suitable age with a trailer and bucket of food bring her home give her another set of calves and she would be just as delighted with the next lot, they don't make too many cows like her!

Stephanie

[Louisa Gidney]

I did double suckling about 20 years ago. It's a lot of work and you need to cost how much extra food the cow needs and the labour and the cost of the bought in calf against what the calf will sell for.
As Saffy says, so much depends on the cow. I found an old cow who had been hand milked was very happy to accept all and any calves. First time calvers were most reluctant unless they had been reared with a second calf and therefore thought the situation was normal. Within my herd, I've had cows who were happy for other calves to join hers for a milk break. This is the type of cow that would be best to start double suckling with.
I bought in Jersey or Jersey cross calves at 1-2 weeks old. I've fostered a calf onto a cow whose calf was still born 3 days after the birth, but I had left the corpse with her, to rub onto the newcomer. She soon took to the idea that a live bouncy calf was more interesting than one that lay there without moving.
Like Ann, one of the reasons I stopped was that the Jersey calves always brought scour in with them, which the Dexter calves then caught, so there was time and expense in treating them all and one of the Jerseys still died on me.
I would not recommend starting on double suckling until you have more experience of how your own cows behave.

[SteveM]

never tried double suckling a dexter, though have in the past with commercial beef crosses, when we just had a couple of cows to use up our quota.

Some dexters must take to it as have seen a couple of our cows on occasions with extra calves hung on. oftens at 3-4 month old.

Guess its a case of if you dont think you are getting enough milk from mum you poach else where.