Bovine Wisdom

Train to Chain

     Training your animals to come to chain is well worth with the investment of time and effort. Coming to chain is just one of the things you can do to make raising these wonderful animals safer for the animals and for yourself as well.

One of the first pieces of advice both Howie van Ord and M.J. Knight passed our way was to be sure to train our animals to chain; and to be sure to do it quickly. Before raising bovines, our husbandry experiences had been limited to goats and sheep. The former are overly friendly and may therefore be trained easily to come to grain; it is nearly impossible (without a significant investment in time) to get the latter to do much at all. [This is not entirely true. Over the years we have culled the most 'lawless' of our sheep and, as a result, our flock has calmed down noticeably.] In any event, where sheep and goats are concerned the entire group may be easily herded into the barn when we need to do health checks or for a variety of other reasons. Bovines are a different matter. First of all we pasture our cows in areas which are some distance from the barn. Even if the barn were closer to the cows it doesn't make a lot of sense to herd in 5 or 6 or more very large animals when one needs to examine just one of them. Moreover getting even small numbers of cows together in limited confines can be a dangerous proposition for everyone. It is better to be able to anchor your animals on pasture; and that's why it's important to train your cows to chain.
Training your animals to chain is a fairly simple operation. The first thing that is required is a place to do so. Even if you intend to chain just two cows keep in mind that if they should become excited they'll be pulling (or pushing) with all their might with the approximate weight and power of, at the very least,  a classic VW Beetle-and-a-half. This anchoring place must be well constructed. We built ours from 8 foot sections of recycled telephone poles which are 10 - 12 inches in diameter. These were sunk a bit more than 4 feet into the ground and set in concrete. The posts are spanned with a length of 3/8" chain. The photo to the left shows the short pieces of chain which are spaced equally along the line. These drop chains are about a foot long and have panic snaps fixed with repair links. Although panic snaps are a bit more difficult to manipulate (especially with gloves on) than are regular snaps we feel they are good insurance against disaster in many potential circumstances.
Once you have your location established you need to train the animals to do what it is you want them to do which is to come to a particular spot and stand. Grain is a great motivator and the process of training your animals must involve some sort of payoff for them; the animals must know that coming to chain is to their advantage. We no longer call animals to chain; when they see the blue bucket emerging from the barn they come running and know what to do. In the beginning however the learning curve was fairly steep. Training involved calling the cows, showing them that there was grain available, depositing some of that grain in shallow pans, and placing the pans below the tie spots. The most difficult part of this entire process is chaining each animal to the panic snap. Needless to say, your animals must be sporting neck chains for this process to work. We use #1 Twist Link chain and quick links as neck chains (which also carry individual animal identification tags). As each animal approaches the feed pan you need to reach, from above the spanner chain, for the neck chain and fix it to the panic snap. One must be especially careful with horned animals at just this moment. Although a Devon will rarely, if ever, attempt to do damage with horns one or another may indeed do so, inadvertently, by simply lifting its head to see what you're doing while you attempt to secure the down chain. Always be very careful when you do this. Do not allow animals to steal from each other's pan while you are chaining. This can lead to pushing, which can be dangerous if one of the animals involved happens to be anchored. With time the animals will learn what's expected and you can call them to chain for deworming, health checks, or for any other procedure which requires close or hands on examination.
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