Re mad heifer!

[moomin]

I have had a bit of experience halter training over the last 40 years and made many mistakes so have learnt a bit from them.
Firstly you say she is fine when you tie her up but something has upset her along the line. My guess is that you were too keen to start leading her and it was too early.
Go back to the beginning. Tie her up to feed her every day and leave her tied up for lengthening times afterwards until she lies down and cuds. You want her totally relaxed. Never untie her while she is fighting the rope, wait until she is settled. Always finish on a good note.
Cows follow the rope they are attached to not you! If you try and lead them before they have learned that they cannot get away from the rope you will have a lot of work to undo. This might take days now to get to this stage, be patient.
When you feel the time is ripe get another dish of food about 10 or 20 feet away untie her and take her to it, tie her up again to eat. We are now in the reward stage. Stage 3 halter her and lead her a short distance to her feed every day. Then lengthen the distance.
Because she has had a bad experience you have to undo it and make her get it into her head that nice things happen when she is led! You wouldn't have to do this normally.
Out of interest what are you using as a halter? You do need to have a long enough rope so you are out of reach of her horns as mentioned before. Dexters like to see where they are going so don't hold her too tightly.
Another trick is not to look directly at her when leading. Remember humans are predators that is why we have eyes at the front of our head! You can see what she is doing out of the corner of your eye. It is often easier to train if there is just one person about. They do not feel so threatened then. keep very calm all the time. Expect good behaviour from her not bad.
Saying all this one of my heifers lay down and went upside down at the Royal Show one year because she was frightened. The judge said he couldn't judge her like that. I agreed with him but mentioned how nice her teats were! It was no use my getting upset even if she was literally "upset" so I kept calm and just laughed, so did the audience, she was fine at the next show.
Best of luck,
Di

[Rob R]

There's more risk with cows than chickens, too, but if you address the problem, rather than the symptoms, surely that's a better approach to take? It could be kicking or biting, in which case would you say there's less risk if you were to remove the legs or teeth?

Di gets what I'm talking about - she's thinking like a cow! (No offence Di!!)

[Jac]

There's more risk with cows than chickens, too, but if you address the problem, rather than the symptoms, surely that's a better approach to take? It could be kicking or biting, in which case would you say there's less risk if you were to remove the legs or teeth?

Di gets what I'm talking about - she's thinking like a cow! (No offence Di!!)

Sorry no, would not have a cow with horns - line in the sand.

[Rob R]

There's more risk with cows than chickens, too, but if you address the problem, rather than the symptoms, surely that's a better approach to take? It could be kicking or biting, in which case would you say there's less risk if you were to remove the legs or teeth?

Di gets what I'm talking about - she's thinking like a cow! (No offence Di!!)

Sorry no, would not have a cow with horns - line in the sand.

Well that's OK, you don't have to.

[Jac]

Your method of halter training is well tried and tested Di and I know that it does work because like many others I have used it myself on older heifers in the past.

Hopefully, Jenny will get back to us and let us know how she gets on with her heifer and whether her confidence has been restored sufficiently to lead her.

[5471jenny]

Thank you for all the replies I can only apologise for the delay replying, were rearing our batch of 50 aa calves as well as Dexter training. I'm pleased to report after much soul searching and deep and meaningful chats and gentle haltering myself and the heifer have resolved our differences and she now walks Well. Antler swinging has stopped since she realised I'll just hold whichever one she swung! I think she needed a lot more patience than I perceived! Lesson learnt and I guess it's all about experience! She will be going to her first show on Monday with two of her herd mates so that'll be the ultimate test. She is better again in unknown territory for some reason! I'm glad I gave her the benefit of the doubt and maybe due to my lack of experience I thought she was worse than she was? Either way im glad we appear to have survived and come out the other side. Thanks again for all the advice and apologies if I sparked debate!

[Jac]

I am glad you have resolved your differences with your heifer and wish you all the best with your showing. In the interests of other posts made on the subject of halter breaking, it would be helpful to know which method you followed and how long the process took from start to finish.

[Rob R]

Thanks again for all the advice and apologies if I sparked debate!

No need to apologise for that - this place would be rather less interesting without it!

[Saffy]

Jenny...not only do we lurve debate...it is EVEN better when it about someone else and their cows, methinks Dexter owners are a little like their moo cows - a bit on the nosy side, sometimes wicked with a sense of humour thrown in for good measure!

Glad your heifer saw the light and is now a paragon of virtue!!!

Stephanie

[5471jenny]

And the result of Monday's outing..... She placed 3rd in her class!!! Absolutely delighted! And her friend that went with her placed 2nd in the class! A very surprising positive experience of my first ever show! And more importantly to me than the rosettes both girls seemed happy and relaxed with the scenario and we're happy to be stroked by the public! Interesting that i had a 4yr old horned cow, a polled heifer and the "mad" horned heifer at the show and people seemed happier offering up their small children or dogs to the faces of the horned ones first! Safety seemed to be out the window!lol lucky my girls took it well!
With regards to the training method I used, I tied her for a day with the more experienced cow. Then the next day I tied her for a couple hrs then tried to walk her but let her go at her own pace and where she wanted to go. ( we were contained in one of our holding pens so a nice bit of room but no escape if worst happens!) she seemed happy with mooching with me on the end of the rope so then I gently started encouraging her to go where I wanted to. Any horn swinging and I held the horn steady and away from me. Think she got the idea that if she swung them they got stuck as such! We just repeated all this twice a day for a week and made sure she could see the other two cows behaving nicely on the halter and getting to walk around outside the pen.i don't know if that would've made a difference but thought it wouldn't hurt to watch and learn. I took on board the comment about thinking like a cow too which helped!!

[Rob R]

I'm pleased to hear that the show went well. I was out with the camera taking some photos of Nat training her two boys to walk together yesterday;



(You'll need to right-click and select 'view image' to get the full picture)

[moomin]

Well done Jenny! You now are truly hooked and have Dexteritis!
Di

[ann]

Hi rob, maybe you should by Nat a horse, I use to ride the cows before I could afford a horse, lovely pictures and they look very well behaved. Will she be following in the foot steps of Colin Newlove and doing a jumping display at the Yorkshire show ?

[Rob R]

She's only just got rid of the horse - we don't need another one cluttering up the place! As for the Yorkshire show, I expect so.