Skip to main content

How to tell if your house cow is on heat

If you want your cow to continue producing milk, at some stage she’s going to need to have another calf.  Essentially you have two options, either artificial insemination (AI) or a bull. We have tried both. If you’re going to use artificial insemination, talk to your vet a few weeks in advance and arrange with them to have the appropriate semen ready. You will need to call them again on the day your cow is in “standing heat” (explained below) and arrange for a house call. In total this only cost us $100, but we are only 10 km from town, a vet may charge considerably more if they have to travel further. There is no guarantee that artificial insemination will work the first time and you may need several visits to get the timing perfect. When the vet came, he just asked us to lead Bella to her bales, he didn’t need to restrain her any more than we do for milking. I was surprised how good Bella was, considering how much she kicks us when we are trying to milk her, she didn't seem to mind having the vet's hand up her rear end at all!  Here's the full story about Bella and AI.

You will need to learn to recognise the signs that she’s on heat, this will allow you to track her ovulation cycles so you can work out the ideal timing for her to be artificially inseminated or for her to visit the bull. A cow’s cycle will last around 21 days, so after you have noted her coming on heat a few times, you should be able to predict the timing fairly accurately. Our dairy farmer friend says that cows are “moody like women”, and I have to agree, you do see Bella in different moods and when she's on heat she gets particularly short-tempered. A couple of days leading up to standing heat, Bella will bellow at us when she sees us and try to ride the other cattle (including her calf).  When she's in "standing heat" she will stand while the other cattle try to mount her, and this is the ideal time for insemination, by either method.  She will also usually have a swollen vulva and some mucus discharge. After standing heat there is usually a very small amount of blood discharge (which you can often find as a line on her tail). The most important thing is to closely observe your cow and take notes of any changes in behaviour so that you can begin to get an idea of the timing of her cycle.

Here's Bella and Molly when Molly was still a heifer
We were worried that Molly, being a heifer, would be more difficult to artificially inseminate, so we looked for a suitable bull, and we found Donald, the Dexter bull. Dexters are tiny, he was only 1m tall at his hips, but he was big enough to get the job done.  Donald only cost us $300, and he has produced five pregnancies and three calves before his unfortunate demise, so he has earned his keep, but he was extra work and an extra mouth to feed  He broke fences several times to fight with the full sized bull in our neighbour’s paddock (more about keeping a bull on a small farm.). Using a bull is easier than AI because you don’t have to identify heat exactly, he works that out for you. However, you may find that you have little choice in the timing of the pregnancy, as cow and bull will break fences to be together when the time is right. If you don’t have space or inclination to buy a bull, you can often borrow or rent a bull, or take your cow to visit someone else’s bull.

Whichever method you chose to get your cow “in calf”, you will also need to decide what breed of bull (or semen) you want to use. We chose small bulls so that our cows have small calves and (relatively) easy births. You may also choose to use a meat breed if you want to raise the calf for meat, or a dairy breed if you’re hoping for a baby house cow.

Remember how cute Monty was as a calf?
Some helpful information about artificial insemination and heat detection here and here.

How do you tell when your cow is on heat?  Do you use AI or a bull?

You might also be interested in my series on getting started with homestead dairy

Comments

  1. Looks great Liz, I'll be keen for a copy once the Kindle is back in action

    ReplyDelete
  2. I only wish I had a few acres for myself now. I grew up on house cow milk. It was delicious.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may  have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive!  Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap.  And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps.  I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation  and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment.  One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap.   As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances).   When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather.  I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap.  It also contributes a tan or brown colour to