Quietwean....

[moobaa]

Has anyone used the Quietwean nose tags? Thinking of using them this year, but had mixed reports looking online. People saying that as much as 50% fell out, and calves still called for their mums once seperated. Got about 150 calves to wean next month, so was thinking about putting these on the calves and leaving them outside for a week before weaning. Any thoughts?

 

[Alicecow]

Sounds like a lot of tags to be buying, and a lot of work putting them on and off. Why not just pen them near to each other but not able to reach through for a week, calves on creep beforehand, then when all is quiet take one of the groups back out?

 

[moobaa]

We've done that in the past and its 10 days of deafening noise!!

 

[Alicecow]

The scheme thingy here said to remove up to about 10 cows per day from the group, or was it 10% every few days.

 

[Chae1]

We've done that in the past and its 10 days of deafening noise!!

Ten days!? What breed is that?

Ours normally get hoarse after 24 hours.

 

[Gulli]

They work really well. Lost 1 out of 3 this year (very scientific test ) but made no difference. Weaning was a piece of cake didn't even bring them in.

 

[AGN76]

We've done that in the past and its 10 days of deafening noise!!

What age are calves?

 

[M-J-G]

https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/quiet-wean.77692/

 

[Happy]

Ten days!? What breed is that?

Ours normally get hoarse after 24 hours.

Did ours yesterday. Cows in one court, calves in another.
Definitely a good bit quieter tonight.
Usually find it's all quiet from day 3 onwards. Cows wIll be going back outside tomorrow morning.

 

[Jonny B88]

Brilliant things! Used them for the first time this year. Brought the cows and calves in and put the m in the calves and put cows and calves out for a week. Then brought them back in put cows on straw and calves back out to field with a trough. Hardly any noise and the calves are very happy as are the mothers will be using them again! Why don't you wean your heaviest 50 then the next 50 and so on?

 

[foxbox]

We've used them for the last two years and I'm quite impressed with them. I'm sure it'll be covered in other threads but my observations below:

Put them in and let the calves and cows out in to a spacious pen. If they're tight where you turn out (immediately after the crush) you may lose some before you leave the yard.

Put them back out to grass as opposed to a yard or coral.

Try to ensure there is plenty of grass for the calves and cows so you don't need to supplementary feed. We lost a few last year when providing a hay bale in a ring; presumably as they got them caught in the hay which helped pull them out.

You will probably lose a couple at grass, don't worry about it and they're easy to find and the lack of stress on pen mates will help calm the odd animal missing them.

Putting the tags in is also a great time to vaccinate if you already do it. We've done it this year and it means the calves are covered when they arrive in the shed; when we've snatch weaned in the past it's taken a few days from housing for full immunity to be developed.

Cows and calves seem a little agitated at grass which is understandable but once indoors the calves are silent on the first night. We've had a little bit of talking on the second day but again a quiet night on night 2. Cows are a little more agitated but my guess is that it's a result of the few that lost nose tags. Those cows are more vocal; their calves are settled though.

Not convinced it makes much difference to weaning weight gain/loss although that is very hard to weigh accurately. Growth rates last year between a Quietwean group and snatch wean group (weighed a week before tags fitted and 2 weeks or so after weaning) were very similar.

Calves weaned using the tags come in looking for feed if you haven't been creep feeding at grass whereas snatched calves seem to take a few days to fully adjust to separation in the same scenario.

 

[oldsmokey]

We found they worked well...only little difficulty was trying to have grass in front of cslves and cutting back mothers in the ssme field..creep gate would help i suppose.

 

[Iain289]

Has anyone used these with success inside or do they get pulled out when they try to eat silage??
I'm just about to wean 60 calves in a shed just 4 or 5 metres from the house and the noise on previous years is hellish! Running the calves through the crush to put plates in/out won't be a problem because we will be weighing them anyway.

 

[foxbox]

Has anyone used these with success inside or do they get pulled out when they try to eat silage??
I'm just about to wean 60 calves in a shed just 4 or 5 metres from the house and the noise on previous years is hellish! Running the calves through the crush to put plates in/out won't be a problem because we will be weighing them anyway.

I've not tried them indoors but I'd guess you'll get a higher loss rate, I still think it'd be worth a go though. Unfortunately even one cow with her calf taken away can make one hell of a noise but it's still far better than 60 bawling at you!

 

[Iain289]

I've not tried them indoors but I'd guess you'll get a higher loss rate, I still think it'd be worth a go though. Unfortunately even one cow with her calf taken away can make one hell of a noise but it's still far better than 60 bawling at you!

I forgot to open the creep gates after scraping out yesterday and when I got home from work the noise was bad but I think my irate wife was louder!!

It wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to put another plate in the calves that lose theirs. I could wean these calves in 2 lots of 30 (each side of the shed) but for another year I have 6 lots of 30 getting weaned at slightly different times so it would make full use of them.

 

[Jonny B88]

Has anyone used these with success inside or do they get pulled out when they try to eat silage??
I'm just about to wean 60 calves in a shed just 4 or 5 metres from the house and the noise on previous years is hellish! Running the calves through the crush to put plates in/out won't be a problem because we will be weighing them anyway.

We have had success with using them indoors. We weaned our last group of 9 calves last week with them and didn’t lose any. No noise whatsoever from calves. I guess that’s because once the realise they aren’t getting any milk from mum then there is no reason to be with her really. Cows make a little noise but probably because they have full bags.

 

[Henarar]

we have used them inside and not had any trouble with them

 

[Northeastfarmer]

Best thing to do when spaning calves is to sell them the day you spane and let someone else have the headache

 

[le bon paysan]

Has anyone used the Quietwean nose tags? Thinking of using them this year, but had mixed reports looking online. People saying that as much as 50% fell out, and calves still called for their mums once seperated. Got about 150 calves to wean next month, so was thinking about putting these on the calves and leaving them outside for a week before weaning. Any thoughts?

Brilliant , just had to sell a batch straight off the cow, cows bawled for 3 days. Use QW on all replacements kept and those I wean and feed on. Stops cows and calves fretting and the calf doesn't lose any weight. Cheap to buy and easy to use, lose the odd clip but not many.