Defensiveness is an important aspect of maternal temperament, which can be defined as the set of cow’s behavior in response to disturbance of their relationship with newborn calf. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between 2 temperament traits, flight speed (FS) measured 6 mo before calving and maternal defensiveness in primiparous Nellore beef cows. The FS was performed for 196 heifers measuring the speed (in m/s) at which each animal exited the cattle crush after weighting. The females calved around 24 mo of age and had their maternal temperament assessed 24h after birth, during the handling for calf earmarking and weighing. We assessed the reactions of cows when their newborns were caught in a corral pen, using a maternal defensiveness score (MD), which ranged from 1 (cow exhibited no attention to the calf and remained indifferent to the procedure) to 6 (cow displayed aggressive behaviors toward the handler, trying to attack them). The latency to each cows touch the calf (LT, s) after finishing the handling procedure and the calf be released to the pen was also recorded. Pearson’s coefficients of correlation were calculated among the MD, LT and FS. A significant correlation was found between MD and LT (r = −0.62, P < 0.01), indicating that the shortest latency was related to a more defensive behavior toward the calf. The FS had significant, but low correlation with LT (r = 0.16, P = 0.04), and it was not correlated with MD (r = −0.10, P = 1.79), suggesting that an indicator of fear/excitability is not associated with an indicator of MD. There is a belief among the Brazilian farmers that the calmer Nellore cows during handling are likely to be less defensive toward their calves. However, according to the present results the cows’ temperament assessed during handling in the corral is not related with cows’ MD, providing clear evidence that cows with more excitable yearling temperament (faster FS) would not present more defensive behavior toward their calves compared with the calmer ones.