Weaning Luna

Luna is our little heifer (Daisy's little girl) that was born on October 27, 2015.  She's 8 months old and past time to be weaned.  Tricia and I had been talking about it and finally decided to get the job done on Monday night.  Normally in the evening, we let the calves nurse and then separate them from their mommas so that we have the milk in the morning.  But on Monday night, poor Luna got no milk.  I milked Daisy while Luna stood at the gate and moo'd... loudly.  Something was wrong. This was not her normal routine.  What is going on?

Well, she was soon to find out.  We normally install what we call a weaning plate that makes it near impossible for the calves to get to their momma's udder.  We usually use a plate that you tighten down with a wing nut.  Here is a post about that style plate in this post: Weaning Clarabelle  Although we've used that weaning device numerous times, the crafty calves always figure out ways to pry it out of their nose.  Then when we go to milk the cows in the morning, we discover that the calves have robbed our milk.  (I'm sure they see it from a different perspective.)

This time with Luna we determined that we'd try a different style weaning plate.  At $2.65 it was half the price of the metal one.  It is made entirely of plastic and has pointed spines on it.

Calf Weaner

We held Luna securely and took the weaning plate out of the package.  It came with no instructions, so I figured that you twist the plate until the prongs separate and then install in her nose.  We'll give it a try.  As you can see, Luna is not exactly thrilled about this exercise.

"What are my people up to?"

After a couple minutes of me sweating, Luna mooing, and general chaos in the barn, the device was in place.  The nose is a very tender, vulnerable place on a cow. That's why you see a lot of rings in bull's noses.  I wouldn't like anything in my nose either.  Luna did not like this thing in her nose at all. She stomped around in disoriented fashion and at one point, went down to here knees.  No sir-ee. She didn't like this a bit.

Cmon Man!

Here is an up-close photo.  As you can see, the plate blocks her from opening her mouth to suck milk. It does, however, allow her to reach her head out, flatten the plate on the ground, and pull her head toward her to eat grass.  You'll also notice the points.  If/when she does try to nurse, the points will poke Daisy's bag and she'll promptly get a kick or a nudge to say, "Git!"

Testing a new-style (for us, anyway) weaning plate

In a few minutes, Luna seemed to calm down.  She still looked at me suspiciously, but overall, I think she was coming to grips with this change.  Growing up is tough, huh girl?

Normally, I would separate her, but now she is free to join the rest of the herd.  No more separating her each night!  This will save some time, although we'll now be milking Daisy in the morning AND the evening.  Luna promptly ran up to Daisy and tried to nurse, but it was to no avail.  The weaning plate did its job.  After a bit, she tired of trying as Daisy tried to console her by licking her on the neck.

It's gonna be alright, Luna.

As we left them together, Tricia and I wondered if Luna would pull a "Houdini" and figure out a way to get Daisy's milk or figure out a way to pry the nose plate out. We would know first thing Tuesday morning.  Well, Tuesday morning came and Daisy had a full bag of milk and sad Luna still had the nose plate in.  So far, so good.  We'll give it a while and report back to give a full review of the plastic weaning plate.

One benefit we always see when weaning calves is that the cream content of the milk goes up significantly.  We find this is due to the fact that the calf is getting all the 'hind milk' which is richer in cream.  Once weaned, we get all the cream.  That is a big plus for us!