Work Experience: Dairy Farm

One of the diary herd being nosey

I'm so sorry I haven't written a blog post in over a week, school has been hectic and I haven't been feeling very well. 

Last week, when I went to the farm, I had the chance to see some dehorning of the calves. Dehorning is done for safety and economic reasons. Horned animals can take up more space so require bigger barns or/and fields, they can cause injuries to other cattle and the farmers, special equipment is often required to look after horned cattle and often cattle can entangle their horns on fences and vegetation.

To some people dehorning is considered to be a form of cruelty, however I believe that it would be more cruel to allow the cattle to harm themselves and each other. 

Me and the calves

The calf is first placed into the crush. This, in itself, looks more dramatic than it is. The horn areas are then shaved and anesthetic is then injected into the calf's head. Following this a heater is pushed into the calf's head and the horn is removed. The heat is used to stop the growth of the horn, this is called cauterisation. Dehorning is done when the calf is around three to four weeks old as the horns haven't had chance to attach to the skull. 

Michael dehorning a calf

The area where the horn had been removed was then sprayed with antibacterial "blue" spray. This would prevent infection of the wound. 

Michael also decided to check the teats of the calves and remove any of the extra teats. The best positioned four teats were left and any extra were cut off. I was expecting this procedure to be quite bloody however, I was surprised to see that there was none. We sprayed the areas that had had the teats removed with "blue" spray to prevent infection. It was relatively difficult to hold the calves down, while checking their teats, as they wriggled and kicked out at us if we got too close. Therefore we had to be aware of here they're hooves were in relation to our heads.

Calves are very needy