Halter breaking 10 month old heifer

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Irish Lot Farms

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Joined
Dec 1, 2015
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Hi!
I have a 10 month old pure bred Angus heifer that I want to show in my upcoming 4h fair in August. I have been grain feeding her for a couple months now and she Is fine getting near me. I recently decided to try to start halter breaking her. I realize that the heifer  is a little bit on the heavy side for pulling it around, but I was not going to use this one for show until a couple weeks ago. The heifer does not kick or act agreesive when I try to halter it, but just trots about 10 feet back. I'm trying to halter it in a 10X12 run-in shed and have a bucket of grain in there for them. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could get halter on the heifer?

P.S. I am totally new to this, but am trying to learn as quickly as I can.
 

shortybreeder

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Joined
Feb 23, 2015
Messages
476
Run her into a chute, or work on getting closer and closer to her over time until you can scratch her head. Or just keep going in circles around the pen until you can slip it over her head (on wilder ones I always go ears first because you can get a 2nd chance at the nose, whereas if you go nose 1st you have to get it all at once.)
 

vc

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Joined
Jul 24, 2007
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1,811
Location
So-Cal
2 ways to to do with out a fight:

1) If you have the time and are not in a rush, get a show stick and start scratching her, scratch her back, brisket and belly, do it every day for a few minutes. Try and get closer and closer so you can get your hands on her while you scratch, once you can get near her, she is ready to slip the halter on while you scratch. (Rope halter, not the buckle type) This takes time to get to but is easy to do once you get them to where they like being scratched, I can go in the pasture and halter them if I take a showstick and scratch them, with out it forget it.

2) This works best with 2 people. We have haltered them by taking a rope halter, sizing it to fit, opening the lower part of the halter (the portion under the chin) so you have plenty of slack, move the heifer into a corner, have the person with out the halter move slightly toward her, most of the time they will try and keep their rear towards that person, this will give the person with the halter a chance to place the halter over her ears. We do this with the halter hanging on the end of the showstick, you place it over the far ear, then use the showstick to pull the halter over the other ear. Once you have the halter over the ears adjust it with the stick so it hanging in posistion, grap the lead twist it so the lower portion twist towards the calf and then pull out the slack, she is haltered. It happens faster than I can type it once you get the hang of it.



 
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