How to introduce new cattle to a property

When you bring new animals to your property its a good idea to have a small paddock ready where they can spend a few days before they join the rest of your animals. This allows them to get over the stress of transport and get used to a new home without being hassled by other animals. All herd or flock animals will fight at first to establish the "pecking order" (not sure what the cattle equivalent is! head-butting order?). If they meet over the fence and from a distance before they are put in the same paddock or pen, the fighting won't be as bad, because they've already got used to each other. The separation also gives you a chance to make sure that your new animal isn't sick with something that could be spread to the others. If you put them all together immediately you might not notice in time.

Bratwurst and Frankfurter watch the other cattle
from the safety of another paddock.

This may be the plan, but as usual around here, it doesn't always work. When we first brought Murray home to be in Trevor's herd (see more here) we unloaded him into a small pen in Trevor's paddock. Then we went inside to have dinner. When we came outside to check on our new little steer, Murray was nowhere to be seen. He had climbed out somehow, through or over the 4 foot chain-link fence! And taken off into the back paddock with Trevor, they didn't come back for days! Trevor was just so happy to have a friend.

Earlier this year we brought home a rooster that a friend had hatched from our eggs. We should have kept him separate, but were running out of cages. We thought that he could go into the cage with all the other roosters as he was a bit larger than them, so we thought he'd be fine. Unfortunately he had grown up with another rooster and always been submissive, so when he went into the cage with the other roosters, even though he was bigger, he didn't know how to assert himself. All the other roosters picked on him! We had to move him into the cage with the hens instead (which I'm sure he doesn't mind). It just goes to show that you never know how the animals will get on when you put them together, so it pays to be careful so they don't get hurt.

Any thoughts on introducing new animals?

Comments

Cooking and eating beans

When I was growing up, my family never ate many dried beans, they just weren't something that was used much in NZ cuisine. If I did eat beans, it was always from a can (and most likely baked beans). And until recently I was still using beans from a can, but it can be difficult to get organic beans, and to find cans not lined with BPA. Then I had an opportunity to buy some organic dry goods in bulk, so I bought 5kg of kidney beans, 5kg of adzuki beans and 5kg of chickpea (garbanzo beans). I know, that is a lot of beans. And then I didn't really know what to do with them! Not just what dishes to put them in, but how to prepare them, I just didn't know what method to use. So I decided it was time to learn how to use all these beans that I bought, here's what I found out. I started with an excellent ebook called The Everything Beans Book , from Katie at Kitchen Stewardship, which has lots of bean recipes, but more importantly, an explanation of h...

Guest post: Is there a place for power tools in the garden?

One of my regular readers and commenters offered to write a guest post about a horticulture course, its quite a funny read, with some serious insights into our technology obsession. If you'd like to submit a guest post, email me at eight.acres.liz {at} gmail.com. While I am always happy to share links back to your blog or website, this contributor preferred to remain anonymous. I hope you enjoy their story.... -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- -**- Just a few days ago our daily horticulture classes were interrupted by an invitation to review some new gardening gadgets. The idea was to open half a dozen of electric hand trimmers , test them and fill in some review about their goods and bads. As nothing is more dear to a student – even a “hort “ one - to escape routine and mess around till lunchtime, we opened the boxes and got down to business. What did we...

Making tallow soap

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon.... For some reason I've always thought that making soap seemed too hard. For a start the number of ingredients required was confusing and all the safety warnings about using the alkali put me off. The worst part for me was that most of the ingredients had to be purchased, and some even imported (palm oil and coconut oil), which never seemed very self-sufficient. I can definitely see the benefits of using homemade soap instead of mass produced soap (that often contains synthetic fragrance, colour, preservatives, and has had the glycerine removed), but it seemed to me that if I was going to buy all the ingredients I may as well just buy the soap and save myself all the hassle. For the past several years I have bought homemade soap from various market stalls and websites, and that...

Eight Acres

Search This Blog