How to set up calf sharing with your milk cow

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Over the years we have calf shared with a variety of different milk cows. Sometimes it works, and sometimes its just a big pain in the butt! In this blog post I want to take you through benefits, as well as down sides to calf sharing, and how to set up calf sharing on your homestead.

Calf sharing with your milk cow is when instead of taking the calf away from the cow after birth, you leave the calf on the cow and share the milk, as well as the chore of milking, with the calf. On dairy farms, calf sharing is very uncommon, but on the homestead or small farm, it can make a lot of sense to share the chore of milking with a calf.

The Benefits of Calf Sharing

• Less work to care for the calf.
• The calf will grow bigger and healthier when given the opportunity of free range milk verses a bottle.
• You always have someone around to help you milk. A built in relief milker!
• The cow and the calf get to stay together. Personally I love watching the bond that forms between a cow and her calf. It makes me so happy to know that a calf gets a mother rather than a bottle. 

The Negatives of Calf Sharing

• Cows will hold back cream for their calves. The hind milk, meaning the milk that comes out last, is the richest in cream. If a cow knows that she will be feeding a calf soon, she will hold that hind milk back for the calf. You may not even know she is holding back initially, but when she leaves the milking stall and sees that calf, all of a sudden her udder looks full again. Typically I see my cream line decrease in inches when I am calf sharing. Though it depends on the cow (some of them are just better at it than others), I will typically see a one inch cream line in a gallon jar when I am calf sharing and a 3-4 inch cream line when I am not. I listed this as a negative, but it can actually be a positive! It means that even though you aren’t getting the cream, the growing calf is; A calf that one day could be your replacement heifer or meat for your freezer.
• It can create problems in the milking stall. A cow that forms an attached bond to a calf, may never relax fully in the milking stall. This usually dissipates as the months go on, but for the initial month after calving (an adjustment time), you may encounter several problems like difficult let down, dancing around, calling out, just general bad behaviour. 
• As the calf gets bigger they will take more and more of the milk. Eventually you will have to start separating the calf for a certain time frame to get any milk at all. 
• The calf can sometimes damage the teats. Some calves seem to have more aggressive eating habits or just sharper teeth. 

So now that you have seen a few of the pros and cons of calf sharing, let’s dive into how to actually calf share and a few more details on the finer points. 

How to Calf Share

Today I am going to be talking about calf sharing with high production cows. I will take you through a timeline of what to expect in those first few weeks of setting up calf sharing. If you have a lower production cow, you may need to skip to the separating step earlier. 

Timeline – Initially After The Calf Is Born

Initially after the calf is born the cow will produce colostrum for at least the first 48 hours before you start seeing milk come in. During this time, it is important to let the calf drink freely and to make sure the calf is actually drinking. We usually milk our cow about 12 hours after she gives birth. At this point you do not have to be worried about emptying her completely. What with edema, it would be impossible to do so anyway. The only reason we milk during this time, is to help relieve pressure, and to acquire some of the colostrum. 

Colostrum is a valuable substance on a ranch. We freeze it and keep it for other calves that need it during calving season. As colostrum is a rapidly changing product, we always label the freezer bags with first milking, second milking, third milking. So that we can decipher which colostrum is the highest in nutrients later on. 

Many people choose not to milk during this time. In fact, it is not uncommon for people to not milk their cow for the first 48 hours after giving birth. 

Once The Milk Comes In

A few days after giving birth, your cows milk will start to come in. For up to a week after birth, it will still contain some colostrum and for this reason, I don’t use it for making cheesemaking during this time. (Colostrum does not coagulate properly, plus this first milk often contains tissue shedding and can be a higher somatic cell count.)

After 48 hours, or when the milk comes in, I always start twice a day milking. At this point with a high production dairy cow, they will have a lot of milk. More milk than a few day old calf can handle on their own! It will take weeks, if not a few months, before the calf is large enough to handle all of the milk. Consider that a high production dairy cow reaches peek lactation around 60 days post calving. As the calf grows, so does the milk production and as your cow is still headed towards peek lactation, there is a lot of milk during this time. 

For me it usually takes at least 1-2 months before the calf is large enough to handle one of the milking on their own. During this first few months of calf sharing, the calf stays on the mother 24/7 and is only separated while the mother is in the milking stall. Even though the calf is on the mother constantly, she still has a lot of milk for me twice a day. Often times, you will see that the calf prefers one or two of the quarters and you will notice that you don’t get as much milk from these quarters. 

During this time, I don’t strip out my cow completely. I milk her almost all the way out, but when it comes to making sure every last drop is gone, I leave that to the calf. Calves are very efficient at emptying udders and they leave you with a bit of an insurance policy that yes, the udder will be completely emptied out. If you have been terrified of your cow developing mastitis because you didn’t empty her out completely, calf sharing will set your mind at ease! The cow has most likely held back milk for the calf anyway, and that calf will strip her out well. 

Once You Are Not Getting Any Milk

There will come a point when you have to start separating the calf from the cow to get any milk. This is your natural indication that the calf has grown large enough to handle one of the milkings. Depending on the cow and calf this will happen a few weeks to a few months after birth. If you are calf sharing because you want a relief milker, you have reached your destination. The calf is large enough to handle a milking while you go away. 

If you want milk though, you will need to start locking the calf up for 12 hours before milking. For us, we usually make this easy by locking the calves in an adjoining pen at night. Before bed we go down and lock up the calf, then in the morning we take however much milk we want, before reuniting the cow and calf for the day. 

For me, it is important if I am going to be reuniting the cow and calf directly after milking, that I leave some milk back for the calf. If you strip your cow out completely, you will want to leave the cow and calf separated for a few hours so that she can refill. A hungry calf that has been locked up all night will be ravenous and can damage the teats. Some calves are more prone to this than others. One time we even had to float a calfs teeth because he had sharp points on them. The fact is, when they are hungry, they can be aggressive and if they are sucking on empty teats or not getting enough milk when they are hungry, this could cause problems. 

How Long Should You Calf Share For?

This depends a lot on your homestead and what your goals are for the calf and breeding timelines. A cow can keep a calf on her for up to a year. You will want to wean her at least a few months before she calves again. Some cows, not all of them, will actually wean their calves themselves. Often times calves can be persistent however and will need to be separated from their mother to be weaned. If you are planning on keeping the calf around for awhile keep in mind that even after months of being separated, a calf may still drink from its mother after being reunited. Usually after a few years, they loose this bad habit, but not always. We have had cows drink from cows. It is a problem that only a fence can fix.

If separating the calf from its mother is impossible, you can consider a nose weaner. These are devices that go into the calf’s nose and when the calf tries to drink, the nose weaner pokes the cow and keeps the cow from letting them drink. Calves can be clever though, and they can figure out how to flip the nose weaner up and drink around it. 

If you are planning on keeping your calf as a replacement heifer, or as a beef calf, the longer it can stay on its mother the better. 8 months to a year is about the maximum that a calf should be staying on its mother, but this time frame will give you a large healthy calf, albeit in those last months you can say goodbye to your milk supply. Unless separated, the calf will drink it all! 

We usually wean our calves around 6 months of age. This results in a large calf and at this point they can be getting harder to deal with in terms of locking up and separating. 

Final Comments 

I never say that we will ”for sure calf share” or that we “for sure won’t”. The situation changes with each cow and each calf. It is important to be flexible with calf sharing. I sometimes hear from people that are new to owning a cow and excited about calf sharing because it will give them a relief milker. I always caution people from getting their hopes up or banking on it too much. Every cow is different, every lactation is different. What if the calf dies? What if the cow is aggressive and ornery because she doesn’t want to be separate from her calf? What if the calf cuts the teats? There are too many “what ifs” to get your hopes up.

You have to take each birth as a case by case basis and go into every new milking season with the idea in your mind that calf sharing is only one of the possibilities! 

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