also quite curious. If I walk into the pasture and sit down, I’m soon closely surrounded by a ring of sniffing cows, wondering what in the world I’m doing.
Cattle are not democratic. In every herd, there is a hierarchy, from the bossy top cow to the shy one at the bottom of the pecking order that always gets shoved away from the best feed. Dominance is determined by strength and aggressiveness, but it’s all kind of low key. Cows don’t fight so much as they test to see who can push whom around. You’ll sometimes see a pair of cows head-to-head, hooves planted, just pushing. The winner is the one that pushes hardest and longest. Cows will push around a young bull, too. (Don’t worry, he’ll get over it.)
Cows have different personalities. One of the delights of having a small herd of cattle is getting to know each cow on an individual level. Some are inherently nervous and will never let you get close. Some are docile and like their heads scratched, while others like to spend most of their time shoving everyone else around. Some are overprotective mothers, while others are lackadaisical about their calves. Most will nurse only their own calves, but a few will let any calves help themselves—kind of like those human mothers we fondly remember from our childhoods who would feed any of the neighborhood kids who happened to be around at dinnertime.
Some behaviors are common to all cattle. Because they are, and always have been, a prey species, cattle are hardwired to run at any sign of danger. Danger, to nervous cows, could be anything from a strange human in the pasture to a funny smell. They don’t stop to think about whether there is really a threat; they just take off. They’ll run right over you if they’re in a panic, and they panic fairly easily. For animals that are normally fairly slow moving and clumsy, they can move surprisingly fast when frightened or agitated, and they’ll jump gates and fences—or trample them.
Cattle would rather run than fight, but they will also fight if they have to. A cow will defend its calf; a bull that decides for some reason that a person is competition or a threat will charge and can kill that person. Although when kept with the cows, beef bulls will usually behave themselves and run away with the cows, they are naturally more aggressive than cows, and they are unpredictable. You can’t trust a bull not to charge you instead of running away. Never, ever, turn your back on a bull.
As a prey species, cattle learned long ago that there is safety in numbers. They graze in a group because it’s easier for a group to spot and defend itself against predators than it is for a single animal. The herding instinct is not completely dominant, however. Groups of two or three will wander off, although usually not too far, from the main herd in pursuit of some promising grazing.
If the pasture is large enough, cows prefer to go off by themselves to calve and may remain away for a day or two before returning with their new babies. Cows also use babysitters. Often, you’ll see a single cow watching over a group of calves while all of the other mothers are off grazing and, I presume, gossiping.
Shelter
Cattle tolerate an amazing range of weather conditions and do fine outside year-round in nearly all climates. There are a few times, however, when they should have some sort of shelter. In the “ice belt” (those states between the snowbelt and the no-snowbelt), where there can be months-long stretches of damp, almost-freezing weather, cattle are healthier and happier if they can get out of the mud and the wet. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy; an old shed open on one side or an old barn bedded with old hay, straw, or sawdust will work. However, you’ll need to borrow or rent a skid steer with a bucket to clean the place out in the spring.
Cold winds can be hard on cattle, too. If you can arrange a place where they can get out of the wind, they’ll do much better. This can be anything from a belt of trees to the side of a building. Extremely hot weather is also tough on most types of cattle, so having shade available, again either under trees or near a building, makes a big difference to them.
Most types of existing outbuildings can be converted into indoor cattle handling facilities.
Handling Facilities
Cows are bigger, stronger, and faster than we are, so when it’s time for vaccinations or shipping, we need a way to make them hold still (other than trying to rope them or grab a tail). You can’t hold a half-ton cow if it doesn’t want to be held, and generally it doesn’t. That’s why cattle owners should—for their own safety, if nothing else—have a cattle-handling facility.
Cattle facilities have four parts: a corral or holding pen, a crowding tub, an alley, and a chute with a headgate. The small operator really needs only these four basic components. Even if you have just a couple of steers for the summer, you’ll still need some sort of pen and a chute to load them onto the truck at the end of the year. Make sure to locate your facilities where they will allow easy access for a truck and trailer.
The pen or corral holds the cattle until you’re ready to work them. A few at a time are herded into the crowding tub, which is a small, circular pen with a swing gate that pushes them into the alley. The alley is narrow, so cattle don’t have room to turn and must go single file. At the end of the alley, a grate is raised to let a single animal at a time into the chute, where the cow or steer’s neck is caught in the headgate. This holds the cattle in one place so you can safely administer shots, put on ear tags, or do whatever else may need to be done. Once the vaccinating, breeding, or castrating is done, the headgate is released, and the animal moves back out to pasture. The headgate is then reset for the next patient.
When planning your handling facilities, follow these few basic principles. First, unless it never rains in your area, put your facility inside a building or on cement, or both. It’s no fun working in the mud. Old dairy barns can be easily converted for working beef cattle, as can nearly any sort of shed. Our facility is on a cement pad outside the old barn.
Second, plan for curves, good footing, and good lighting. A slippery surface will make cattle nervous, and they will balk if they see a barrier ahead. They will, however, follow a curve around to its end. They also will move more readily toward a well-lit area than a dark one.
Finally, if you’re building with raw materials rather than buying manufactured components, follow the recommended dimensions exactly. The recommended alley width for your breed of cattle may seem incredibly narrow, but anything wider and you’ll have cattle trying to turn around, which can result in injuries. Never force a heavily pregnant cow into the alley or chute—it might get stuck.
With a little creativity, it’s possible to build a fine facility at a reasonable cost in a fairly small area. Ours is built on a 75 × 50-foot concrete pad next to the old dairy barn. We also use the area for moving tractors and equipment in and out of a shed. We hung a lot of gates that we usually leave open for mechanical traffic but close when handling cattle in order to subdivide the area into three separate pens that wrap around to feed into each other and then into the crowding tub. I bought a manufactured tub, alleyway, and headgate, all of which we bolted to heavy-duty wooden posts that we cemented in so the cows couldn’t push things out of alignment. The result may not be aesthetically beautiful, but for working cattle, it functions wonderfully. The water tank and grain feeders are also situated on the concrete inside the holding pens so the cattle go in there to eat and drink and are very familiar with the setup, which makes for calm and easy handling.
Handling Beef Cattle
Large cattle operations have always known that handling cattle effectively on
