Clarabelle's Bad Day

Have you ever had a bad day?  Most people would answer in the affirmative that there are sometimes days where perhaps one thing goes badly and then things keep getting worse - one bad thing follows another.  Clarabelle, our little seven month old Jersey heifer, had one of those days this last week.

For starters, Tricia had our veterinarian drop by for a farm call and give Clarabelle a brucellosis vaccination.  Brucellosis is a serious disease that infects ruminants and can be transmitted to humans through consumption of their milk.  Brucellosis is incurable and highly contagious and it is for this reason that when herds test positive, they must all be slaughtered.  Although there is no cure, there is a vaccination.  Our veterinarian came and administered the injection.  Animals who have received the brucellosis vaccination must get an ear tag, or in the case of a show animal, an ear tattoo to show that they are vaccinated against the disease. More information on brucellosis can be found At this APHIS link.

The injection is not a pleasant experience for the animal and neither is the tattoo. You can see the green dye in Clarabelle's ear below from her brucellosis tattoo.

Not a happy day

If you are wondering about the metal plate hanging from Clarabelle's nose, well, that leads us into the discussion of how Clarabelle's day continued getting worse from there.  Clarabelle was still nursing on her mom, Rosie.  Each day they spend the day together and she gets to drink Rosie's rich milk.  At night we separate them and Rosie makes milk all night for us.  Well, at seven months old, we wean our calves. That means that Clarabelle's days of drinking her mother's milk are over.

Weaning calves can meat separating them in separate pastures, but this sometimes causes undue stress on the momma cow and the calf.  We like to try to keep them together, but to do this, we put a weaning plate in the calf's nose.  That is what you see hanging in her nose.  There are many different styles.  Below is a primitive weaner that was used to wean calves.  You can see the philosophy of the devices. The device is placed in the animal's nose.  When the calf tries to nurse, the points irritate the momma cow and she won't let the calf suckle because it is uncomfortable.

Image Credit

Installation of the weaner is painless, though.  If you look closely below, you can see a tinge of orange in Clarabelle's nostril.  The weaning plate has rubber balls on the ends of each curved metal piece that is inserted in the nose.  Once in the nose it is tightened down by a wing nut, the rubber balls keeping the weaner from causing irritation.  It doesn't pierce the nose, but it still must annoy her.

Side view of the weaner

Not to mention the fact that she's now unable to get Rosie's teats in her mouth and drink the delicious milk.  She misses the milk and for the first few days, she'll moo and moo.

"Got Milk?"  NO, No I don't, unfortunately!

It doesn't take long, though for her to figure out how to stretch out her neck, extend the plate, and pull her head back across the grass or hay to eat.  Gravity, however, makes it impossible to do the same on Rosie's udder to get milk.

So all in all, it was a bad day.  An injection, a tattoo, a strange, uncomfortable device inserted into her nose, and then being cut off from ever drinking milk again! A bad day indeed.  Take heart, Clarabelle.  At least you're a milk cow and not a beef cow.!

Bully's Nose Plate

Bully is our registered Jersey Bull that is Daisy's "little boy."  We didn't give him an actual name because we intend on selling him.  We don't have room for him on our little farm and don't really prefer to have all the drama that comes with having a bull with the cows full time.  We need to put him with the rest of our cows temporarily, but we don't want him to get our milk.  He's a big fella for a little bull and he could drink all Daisy's milk in no time flat.

We use a little device that we call a 'nose plate' to help with this dilemma.  It probably has an official name, like a Weaner or something.  As you can see below the plate has two appendages with red, rubber balls that are inserted into the calf's nose.  The rubber balls make it somewhat comfortable for the calf - at lease as comfortable as you can be having something in your nose.  One of the appendages slides to the left and right and can be secured in position by tightening the wing nut with a pair of vise grips.

Nose Plate

This picture shows how it would look in Bully's nose.  You would push the balls close together in the nose and tighten the wing nut in order to hold it in place.

Nose plate in 'tighten down' position

On the back-side you can see that the plate has pointed pieces poking out.  The nose plate hangs down in front of the animal's mouth.  If the calf was to try to nurse on his momma, the pointed pieces would poke the cow's udder and cause the momma cow to kick the calf away. 

Points on the nose plate

I held Bully and inserted the nose plate and tightened the wing nut once the plate was in place.

Unhappy Bully

I'm lifting the plate up so that you can see how it is fastened in place.

You may be wondering how the calf eats with this thing in his nose.  Good question. At first it is a little tricky as you can see below.  When the calf tries to eat, the plate gets in the way.

How do I eat with this crazy thing in my nose?

It won't take the calf long to learn that he must extend his neck out to eat and then pull back.  This lays the plate out flat and enables him to grab hay or grass with his tongue and pull into his mouth.  In no time Bully had mastered the process.

Figuring out how to eat with the nose plate in his nose

I just have to keep a close eye on him.  Calves are industrious and notorious for figuring out how to wedge the plate into the fence and pull the nose plate out and then go rob our milk from Daisy.