# Calf sucking clothing



## IndiaJoy (Mar 10, 2014)

We just got a two month old calf which we will be raising for beef. She's quite tame and well behaved, but she is constantly sucking on our clothing whenever we go into the pen. 
Does anyone know why she does this and if/how we can make her stop?
It's cute now, but I don't want a thousand pound cow licking me to death in a few months!


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## ksalvagno (Oct 6, 2009)

Is she still on a bottle? To me she is looking for milk.


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## IndiaJoy (Mar 10, 2014)

No, she was weaned before we got her and has been eating grain. I'm not sure how long she's been weaned, though. I wondered if she was looking for milk. 
It's just a little annoying to come in soaking wet with cow slobber. LOL


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## ThreeHavens (Oct 20, 2011)

I bet she's looking for a bottle. When my kids to that, I either move their head, or I walk away. I won't pet them until they're not sucking on me.


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

Wow that's awfully early to wean a calf I think......it's obvious she wasn't ready. Poor baby.


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## IndiaJoy (Mar 10, 2014)

She comes from a dairy farm and from what I've been reading, I think dairy farms wean earlier than beef farms. Maybe? I don't know for sure.


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## Pygmys1st (Nov 29, 2013)

I have been raising Calves most of my Life.. Buying Bottle babies from Dairy farms Etc.. I "Wean" at 6 to 8 weeks.. As long as they are eating good on the grain.. More than 4 pounds a day.. (I use a Coffee can to determine ) Are eating hay daily... some just kinda push it around with their noses.. But as long as they are eating well and Drinking lots of water... they are fine... don't feed to much hay at first you don't want the Hay belly.. I have 8 more I am weaning off next week.. they will be roughly about 7 to 8 weeks old.. As for my Beef calves.. That I breed and raise they stay with Mom Much longer as they grow faster... they normally stay with her for 4 to 5 months


But yes she will suckle on you for a while or on another calf..


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## Jessica84 (Oct 27, 2011)

Pygmys1st said:


> I have been raising Calves most of my Life.. Buying Bottle babies from Dairy farms Etc.. I "Wean" at 6 to 8 weeks.. As long as they are eating good on the grain.. More than 4 pounds a day.. (I use a Coffee can to determine ) Are eating hay daily... some just kinda push it around with their noses.. But as long as they are eating well and Drinking lots of water... they are fine... don't feed to much hay at first you don't want the Hay belly.. I have 8 more I am weaning off next week.. they will be roughly about 7 to 8 weeks old.. As for my Beef calves.. That I breed and raise they stay with Mom Much longer as they grow faster... they normally stay with her for 4 to 5 months
> 
> But yes she will suckle on you for a while or on another calf..


Really?? I have always weaned at 6 months 4 being the youngest and was her choice because she never really liked me. I myself would not wean that early. Your choice. 
But on e she realizes your not going to give her a bottle any more she will stop. So it just takes time.

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## CritterCarnival (Sep 18, 2013)

When we got our bottle baby calf in November, everything I read said to start adding grain as soon as they will start eating it, and to wean when they are eating 4 pounds a day or more and are grazing and drinking well. 

He was weaned off his bottle at about 11 weeks old and is now now about 7 months old...he STILL wraps his tongue around anything he can reach whenever we mess with him. He especially likes to untie our shoes. :-D

We say a firm "quit that" and give him a quick smack on the nose if he gets to pushy about it. But then he pouts, so...:blue:


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## TDG-Farms (Jul 12, 2013)

3 to 4 months is best. Do you know if the dairy tests for Johnes? If you have other ruminant animals, you put them at high risk of infection and contamination of your farm.


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## DMSMBoers (Dec 23, 2013)

When I raised bottle calves I weaned them at 4 weeks. I did some research an found that if you can get them to eating 4lds of feed aday. This was a 22% feed. I was shoving grain down them 4 or 5 times a day to get them started. Some I couldn't wean till 5 an 6 weeks. You have to get their gut going in order to wean that early. Bottle babies are just mouthy, an they see humans as their milk source. Some quit sooner than others. The tamer they are the worse they are usually.


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

still said:


> Wow that's awfully early to wean a calf I think......it's obvious she wasn't ready. Poor baby.


Actually, it isn't. A lot of people wean bottle calves at 8 weeks of age because of the cost of milk replacer. Sucking clothes, fingers, other calves ears and tails is normal behaviour for bottle calves, just as it is for bottle kids. It has to do with being on a set schedule as opposed to nursing when they are hungry or Mom calls them.


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## TDG-Farms (Jul 12, 2013)

MsScamp said:


> Actually, it isn't. A lot of people wean bottle calves at 8 weeks of age because of the cost of milk replacer. Sucking clothes, fingers, other calves ears and tails is normal behaviour for bottle calves, just as it is for bottle kids. It has to do with being on a set schedule as opposed to nursing when they are hungry or Mom calls them.


OUCH! Raising calves on replacer would kill any profit wouldnt it? Even with weaning early.


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## Pygmys1st (Nov 29, 2013)

TDG-Farms said:


> OUCH! Raising calves on replacer would kill any profit wouldnt it? Even with weaning early.


I raise bottles for My personal Use.. Beef. I also sell to local families Etc.. But Concidering you can not buy a calf for under $250 right now..(Milk Replacer $85)Beef is going to go HIGH..So the Goat market is going to take off... Pigs are also High here.. Just weaned piglet is still $150.. 
But I also look at the Chores it gives the Kids. the Understanding of a Business, the responsibility and they also use everything we raise in 4 h and FFA ...

As for Jessica84 
Yes Really!! as many farmers there are in the World is as Many ways of farming.. Everyone of them will have what works for them.. MAy not work for you YOu may not think it's best BUt it works.. Been doing it our way for 70 Years.. So seams to work..


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

TDG-Farms said:


> OUCH! Raising calves on replacer would kill any profit wouldnt it? Even with weaning early.


Not when I was doing it. At that time I could get a bottle calf for less than $100, and a 50 lb bag of good milk replacer for $50.00. I stopped raising them when prices started hitting $250 for a newborn calf that had probably had no colostrum. Chances are too good of the calf dying and, with that kind of purchase price, one cannot make money unless they have a nurse cow.


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

MsScamp said:


> Actually, it isn't. A lot of people wean bottle calves at 8 weeks of age because of the cost of milk replacer. Sucking clothes, fingers, other calves ears and tails is normal behaviour for bottle calves, just as it is for bottle kids. It has to do with being on a set schedule as opposed to nursing when they are hungry or Mom calls them.


I think we wean animals too early for convenience not because it's better for the animal. A cow would not "naturally" wean her calf at 4, 6, or even 8 weeks......sorry I think it's wrong but that is my opinion. I'm more of a "let nature take it's course" kinda person and think we intervene with things way too much. :2cents: Unfortunately the world revolves around the all mighty dollar. :sigh:


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

As a rancher's daughter, don't even go here with me! It has nothing to do with "convenience", and no rancher worth his/her salt would ever compromise the health of their livestock - that is their bread and butter. It has to do with making a living, and the fact that any bottle baby is time and labor intensive. Every hour he/she spends mixing up replacer or supervising that calf on a nurse cow to make sure it is being fed is an hour that could be better spent doing something else that really needs to be done. In this particular case "letting nature take it's course" generally results in a dead calf. How is that "better" for the animal? You're entitled to your opinion, but don't you dare judge someone else until you've walked a mile in their shoes!


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

I'm not trying to be offensive and what I mean by nature take it's course is not pulling calves away from their mothers before it's time.......I understand the bread and butter all to well but it still doesn't make it right.....the United States has the best food producing system in the world but it's still a sick system.....look up factory farming and you'll see how sick and broken it really is. I'm sorry if I'm coming across offensive I'm not trying to "attack" you personally by any means......we may just have to agree to disagree on this one but it doesn't change the fact that you are a knowledgeable and caring person.....I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings or offended you.
I'm on the same side of the coin I just think that we wean our animals too early......is there any other way to do it that would be just as profitable? Probably not to keep up with the demand. If this bottle baby lost it's mother then you do what you have to do......if it was pulled from it's mother just to make an extra buck well that's another story. 

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## TDG-Farms (Jul 12, 2013)

I dont wanna point out the obvious... but I will. Pulling for convenience falls directly in line with freeing up "time and money". But there are two very different view points to the weaning topic. Weaning as soon as able (2 months for both cows and goats) is never going to be as good for the baby as staying on milk till the typical weaning times. Now if they are feeding on moms or getting raw milk, I think a good argument could be posed to keeping them on milk for as long as possible. But if feeding replacer (which is never going to be nearly as good as raw milk) for 2 months and then switching them over to a better quality of feed that they actually get more out of, then I can see an argument that weaning at 2 months would be preferred.


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

I agree with that........


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## Jessica84 (Oct 27, 2011)

I simply feed that long because any bottle baby calf I have is because something happened to mom and I only keep girls to bottle feed. So since it's sentimental to me I just always feed as long as moms usually do. To be honest I have never heard of weaning that young but never really heard of any age of weaning a bottle kid till now. But since these are keepers that I have and breeding stock I still want them to grow the best they can. I'm not saying two months is wrong just two months seems early to me.....same as a kid. But I have never tried weaning at that age either. So can't say if it's right or wrong. I do have a bottle calf right now he's a boy and I was going to take him to the sale on Tuesday but am now tempted to try the 2 months and see how it goes. It's not like I can't start feeding him a bottle again. 


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

still said:


> I'm not trying to be offensive and what I mean by nature take it's course is not pulling calves away from their mothers before it's time.......I understand the bread and butter all to well but it still doesn't make it right.....the United States has the best food producing system in the world but it's still a sick system.....look up factory farming and you'll see how sick and broken it really is. I'm sorry if I'm coming across offensive I'm not trying to "attack" you personally by any means......we may just have to agree to disagree on this one but it doesn't change the fact that you are a knowledgeable and caring person.....I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings or offended you.
> I'm on the same side of the coin I just think that we wean our animals too early......is there any other way to do it that would be just as profitable? Probably not to keep up with the demand. If this bottle baby lost it's mother then you do what you have to do......if it was pulled from it's mother just to make an extra buck well that's another story.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Goat Forum


Ok, I see where you are coming from. Beef calves are never pulled off their mother and raised on a bottle - at least around here - unless the mother dies, becomes sick and can't raise the calf, or she has twins and can't raise both of them. I misunderstood what you were saying, and I sincerely apologize for that.


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

It's ok  we are all entitled to our opinions.......no hard feelings......I will admit I was worried about upsetting someone on TGS......I've seen how everyone sticks together and I don't want to be an outsider but want to be part of the group lol


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

For what it's worth, I totally agree with you about factory farming. It's one of the reasons I hardly ever eat chicken and I never eat veal. I am all for turning a profit, but I do not believe animals have to suffer to accomplish that. Between you and me, I never subscribed to the gallon of milk per day for bottle calves, either. I know that when we milked beef cows we always got 2 gallons a day. Based on that, it stands to reason that dam raised calves get roughly 2 gallons per day, as well. My bottle calves were fed 2 gallons of a good quality milk replacer per day, in addition to grain and hay, for the 3 - 4 months they were on the bottle.


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

I think about it every time I eat meat from anywhere.......makes me shudder but I'm not at a point where I can only eat what I raise so unfortunately I do feed into the system......I'm working towards raising my own chickens for meat and hopefully growing a beef in the near future......I don't drink milk not out of choice it's just happened that way ( I just cook with it and eat it in cereal lol)but raise dairy goats? Don't know how that came about but I've always been told I'm weird......yeah the factory farming is just sick....the whole meat and egg industry is actually but that opens a whole new can of worms lol! 


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

I know, I do too. That was one of the many good things about being raised on a ranch - we raised our own beef and, for a lot of years, we milked our own cows. We knew what it had been fed, how it was raised, and that it wasn't mistreated. I really miss that but, with the cost of feeding a steer out these days, it's cheaper to buy meat than to raise it. Store bought milk doesn't taste the same as fresh. I've been tempted many times to try goats milk, but I'm afraid it will be so much better than store bought milk that I'll be stuck milking a goat twice a day along with all that that entails. :laugh: I know enough about the poultry industry to know that I don't think I could stand to know any more. What those chickens and turkeys endure is just flat out wrong.


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## goathiker (Apr 14, 2011)

With all these high prices, wow, I can buy Jersey bull calves here all day long at $10 a piece. Nope not beef calves but they taste pretty good anyway...


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

You are right........I don't know much about the meat but store bought eggs around here cost $1.68/dozen but you go to a farmers market and organic farm fresh eggs cost $4-$6/dozen! Who can afford that?!?! I'm selling mine for $2/dozen......why would anyone pay that when they can get store bought for way cheaper? Of course mine taste so much better but still it doesn't make sense. Oh I could go on and on and on lol!! The system is just so sick and broken......it's very sad 


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

goathiker said:


> With all these high prices, wow, I can buy Jersey bull calves here all day long at $10 a piece. Nope not beef calves but they taste pretty good anyway...


Really? $10? Wow that's dirt cheap!

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## goathiker (Apr 14, 2011)

Yep, as soon as the activists took the value from veal calves, they became a liability. And I've seen many veal calf set ups here so I don't need the lecture. They were cared for well here. The only difference now is that they are out in the rain instead of safe and warm in the basement of the barn. That may not be true everywhere, but, it is here. For years after that uprising the dairies had to shoot the calves and use them for fertilizer...Now people are starting to buy them again. Jerseys have the least value and they are literally $10 a piece at 3 days old.


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

Lol!!! I promise I won't lecture you....I'm glad there's a market for them again regardless of what it's for I guess as long as they're not being wasted......I guess it's one of those things that everyone says you shouldn't talk about......religion, politics, abortion and now animal welfare/factory farming! 


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## goathiker (Apr 14, 2011)

Nope your wrong there. Everyone should talk about what we are to do with 100,000's of dairy bull calves born so that their mothers can give milk to the people. There is not a 5,000,000 acre bull calf refuge somewhere. In this case, and maybe only this one they were wrong...
No one likes factory farms, no one has a better idea though. We need to feed so many people and they all eat a bunch in this country. In order to keep us under control, we all have more than any other country. The factory farms do, for the most part, feed the people that don't work for their food though.


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## still (Mar 16, 2013)

You are so right! It's such a big diseased industry that honestly I don't think there is any changing it......we are the best food producing country in the world and but we are greedy also.......it's a vicious cycle that feeds itself (no pun intended) lol. 


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## TDG-Farms (Jul 12, 2013)

goathiker said:


> With all these high prices, wow, I can buy Jersey bull calves here all day long at $10 a piece. Nope not beef calves but they taste pretty good anyway...


Then were you live is behind the times. Those prices were where we were at 3 or 4 years ago. But once Texas started having this nasty drought and forced to sell/butcher cattle, the price jumped and has keep going up. Most of the dairies around here are actually contracted to sell their bull calves to a curtain buyer only. I actually went around to most of the dairies within 80 miles or so from us. 90% were already contracted but non of them were johnes clean. About half of the owners I spoke to laughed when I asked for a lead on where to buy clean calves. Not going to happen and good luck with that was the typical responses.

Average here now for a week old dairy calf, last time I looked was over 150.00 and over 300.00 for beef calves


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## goathiker (Apr 14, 2011)

That would be a normal price price for any calf with black spots or pure black around here Jerseys are a different venue and are difficult to raise. They have to have the high fat of goat milk to thrive  Unless you can get Jersey milk. Plus they aren't worth much as veal being tiny little rascals.


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## Jessica84 (Oct 27, 2011)

They are not worth much at all here either. Not $10 but still. Someone took In 5 calfs to the sale last time I went. The jersey was a few months old.....I'm not good at guessing dairy weight but he was the biggest. He went for $150. The other 3 were black white holstines and maybe a week old. They went for $200-$245 the last one was still a holstines but solid black.....same size and was $350. That was insane. I look at my little angus guy here and very tempted. 


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

goathiker said:


> With all these high prices, wow, I can buy Jersey bull calves here all day long at $10 a piece. Nope not beef calves but they taste pretty good anyway...


You won't get them for that price here. I've seen Holstein's go for $150 to $200 at a few days old.


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

goathiker said:


> Yep, as soon as the activists took the value from veal calves, they became a liability. And I've seen many veal calf set ups here so I don't need the lecture. They were cared for well here. The only difference now is that they are out in the rain instead of safe and warm in the basement of the barn. That may not be true everywhere, but, it is here. For years after that uprising the dairies had to shoot the calves and use them for fertilizer...Now people are starting to buy them again. Jerseys have the least value and they are literally $10 a piece at 3 days old.


I'm not going to lecture you, either. I think I could deal with the basement of the barn. It's not ideal, but it's better than stuffing them in tiny cages so they can't move around. That is just wrong!


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## Wild Hearts Ranch (Dec 26, 2011)

There were some Holstein bull calves at the livestock sale today, I didn't stick around to see what the price was cuz I probably would have come home with one. I know Jerseys are dirt cheap around here cuz they like to up and die. Too bad the dairies aren't willing to keep them on milk for the first week, if enough people knew about it they could probably justify the lost milk (wouldn't it still taste like colostrum anyway? ew) with the cost of the calf. I'd be more likely to pay $100+ if I knew it had full protection from colostrum.


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