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Homesteading: You Can Lead A Heifer To Water But...

11/30/2016

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What to do when you can't get your young heifer to drink from a natural water source.
Star contemplating drinking from the pond.
The poly line is up & Star (our Jersey heifer) now has several acres of pasture along with the pond for her enjoyment. She yelled at us for several days wanting her bottle, but we were finally done with bottle feeding. What we didn't expect was to be yelled at for water. She has an entire quarter acre body of water to drink from not to mention there are several streams that feed into the pond. Why wont she drink from the pond? It doesn't make a lick of sense to us. When she was out & about causing mischief (see: Our First Dairy Cow) she found the little bucket of water in the goat barn and drank it dry. The water in the goats bucket was pond water!
What's a greenhorn to do when their Jersey Heifer will only drink out of a bucket & not a fresh water source?
Seriously how funny is this? The pond is right behind her but she is stuffing her head into a bucket for the same water!
We offered her a bucket of water from the pond. We would dip the entire bucket into the pond while she watched then haul the heavy thing out, water everywhere. She would dive in, greedily gulping it down until the bucket was empty. We were so frustrated. This isn't realistic. Cattle consume copious amounts of water. We couldn't fill a five gallon bucket multiple times a day for her when she had all that water before her. We tried filling the bucket & keeping it as close to the pond as possible hoping to encourage her to drink from the pond. We even splashed at the water. No dice. She sniffed at it, but that's it. It seemed that for Star water to drink only comes in a bucket.
How do you get a bottle fed cow to drink from a fresh water source when she previously only drank from a bucket?
Timber! There goes half the water in the bucket!
A bucket that she knocked over ninety five percent of the time, spilling out the contents.  What's a farmer to do? We know so little about raising cattle. We got the bright idea to ask our neighbor if he could put his big ol' beef cattle on our property in hopes that when Star saw them drinking from the pond she would get the idea. Our neighbor agreed & we dropped the gate between our properties. Star was deliriously happy to have all these new buddies.  She kicked up her back legs & danced around in joy. The beef cattle (Black Angus) didn't even bat an eye... tail? They welcomed her as if she was always one of them (we humans could learn a thing or two from these bovines).  Imagine the sight of our little brown Jersey girl, not even six months old cavorting about with big mature pregnant solid black cows. Much to our relief, she quickly figured out that the pond was a great source of water. Problem solved. Whew!
You never know what you'll get with your bottle fed calf. Sometimes leading them to water, doesn't mean they will drink.
Look Ma! I'm drinking water from the pond!
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    Do you dream about living the simple life?  Your own idyllic farm where the cows moo and the veggies are the best you've ever eaten? I've got a surprise for you, homesteading isn't easy! Join me at my small eco family farm where we stumble often, and learn as we go. This is indeed the good life, but it is also a very hard life that only rewards for that hard work... or not!  Back to the land, it's tough and I love it.Hi there! My name is Jen. I'm a "tree hugging dirt worshiper" who has been organically farming for well over a decade. It never ceases to amaze me at how much I've learned & how much I am still learning. I have studied natural health, nutrition, & herbs for over two decades. Our health & the natural world around us are connected in ways we don't often realize. How we treat the land & animals directly affects us in both body & mind. My goal is to provide others with truly natural humane goods from my own little piece of paradise, & to freely pass along whatever knowledge I pick up along the way. I am grateful every day to be able to have such a worthwhile & fulfilling job surrounded by the beauty & unpredictability of Mother Nature.

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