Weaning without waste

Qld Country Life April 2011

Weaning means stress, and stress means weight loss. That didn’t suit Lancelin, WA, beef producer and tagasaste pioneer Bob Wilson, who has developed a weaning strategy that usually results in his calves—and cows—gaining weight over a period when they would normally lose it.

Mr Wilson and wife Anne have for 20 years leased a 2000 ha property, Tagasaste Farm on the sandplain near Lancelin, 150 km north of Perth. Extensive plantings have been made of the farm’s namesake legume fodder shrub, allowing the couple to carry 400 breeders and 200 heifers, plus up to 1500 head of cattle on agistment in the winter.

In 2007, Mr Wilson followed up on an advertisement for Easywean noserings, a South African invention that inhibits calves from sucking on their mothers. The spiked rings force calves to stop relying on their mothers for milk, and the cows dry up; but the calves stay in the mob with their mothers during the weaning process, eliminating the stress of separation.

That also eliminates a lot of stress for the producer, Mr Wilson observes.

In 2007, the first year he used the EasyWean® rings, Mr Wilson’s bull calves gained an average five kilograms during a three-week weaning, and the heifer calves stacked on 15 kg.

Results have varied since, but his calves have never lost weight during weaning, despite being weaned in the hottest, driest part of the WA summer.

This year, an exceptionally tough year for the WA Midlands, Mr Wilson put the nose rings into his bull calves on December 29. When he took them out on January 26, the calves had gained 9.8 kg.

His heifers were weaned later, during the full blast of a hot WA summer, but when the rings came out after a three week weaning on February 14, they had gained an average 5.3 kg.

Apart from their productivity benefits, the EasyWean® rings fit neatly into Mr Wilson’s beef enterprise.

Bull calves go on the boat and are shipped live to feedlots in the Middle East.

To ship them in optimum condition, and with the least amount of pre-transit stress, Mr Wilson usually applies the EasyWean® rings about three to four weeks before the ship is scheduled to leave.

The final weaning of the bulls from their mothers is done just before the calves are trucked off. The calves are held in the yards, and the laneways kept open so mothers can return if they choose to.

Before we used the nose rings we’d get a stack of mothers hanging around, and it would be four days before we could take them back to a paddock without them demolishing the fences or gates, Mr Wilson said.

With the rings, the only mothers hanging around for more than a day are for calves that have lost nose rings.

With our current system, we have occasionally taken the rings out of the bull calves, soaked and cleaned them in disinfectant, then replaced them straight into the heifer calves. In a pinch, that might mean that Mr Wilson only needs half the number of rings, but he chooses to keep enough on hand to do the entire mob at the same time if necessary.

Applying the EasyWean® rings on this roster means some double handling, Mr Wilson acknowledges, but not enough to offset the rings’ benefits.

Each time the calves are put into the yard, they are weighed, and on one of those occasions they are given routine injections, so that each visit has value outside ring application or removal.

And the alternative, of locking calves in the yard for several days during a traditional yard weaning, is a recipe for pinkeye in the sandplain environment.

Ring losses are minimal, in the order of one or two per mob a year, despite the woody stems of the tagasaste on Tagasaste Farm presenting one of the severest possible tests for the rings.

As a testament to the rings’ longevity, Mr Wilson is still only using the nose rings he bought in 2007, each of which has spent at least four, and sometimes six weeks, of each subsequent year in use.