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Calving headaches!

I should've known better than to read this thread, jinx! At chores this morning, I noticed a cow acting stupid so I told my husband she was going to calve. And then off to town I went for groceries. He looked at her on and off through the day but she never really got serious about calving. When I came home, I went out to do evening chores and she was still p***ing around. I got him home from the neighbour's to check her, calf was presented right and we pulled it. Pretty easy pull. Long story short, don't think calf is going to make it. Started right up with godawful bellers, you all know the ones I mean. Like it was in the worst pain. Of course, for some reason, the damn cow is ignoring it and it isn't even the first calf she's ever had. It's her 3rd and she mothered the other two just fine. BTW, she's 3/4 simmental, 1/4 red angus. She's a bit of a wingnut!
 
SDSteve: "To the guy that traded for some herefords. Well if you don't have brains enough to raise your own replacements get the heck out of the cattle business. Junk cow traders are the scourge of the land. If you raise your own replacements and cull rigorously prolapse and cancer eye don't happen."

Response: These were not "junk" Herefords. They all were nice uniform gentle Hereford two-year-olds with spring Hereford calves at their side, all off the same reputable Montana ranch. They were purchased the year before as bred heifers, and were bought and calved out by a friend in eastern South Dakota. He droughted out in early June, and needed a home for these pairs. He had to find grass or sell the cattle. I offered to trade my home-raised pregnant fall calving cows straight across for these already calved out pairs, realizing that a one hundred percent calf crop was already assured. Another benefit would be that I would have calves to sell at least six months earlier than if I were to calve out my fall calvers. He found grass in our area for the fall calving cows, and we made the trade.

Normally we do raise our own replacements. Most problems are eliminated with constant culling.

I try to not be so narrow-minded that I can't open a door if opportunity knocks. Opportunity knocked, and I let it in. I gambled. I didn't lose, necessarily, but I didn't win too big either. I did learn a lesson. Sometimes tuition comes high, but it keeps life interesting. The only time experience is in vain, is if we don't learn from our mistakes.
 
Alive! Happy, bouncing, sucked out the cow. Cow has an attitude, she just got whacked on the end of her nose with the "stick" for her trouble. Mother Nature really does work miracles. It's amazing!
 
We have hereford and angus. I love our black baldies they have been very profitable for us. The last prolapse was 5 years ago and it was an angus. We have no pinkeye, no hoofrot, no problems. We calf in the pasture and have had great calving percentages. The kids and I can tag all the herefords by ourselves. Roscoe goes with us on most of the angus, some we tag by ourselves. Our terantaise are gentle I don't blink and eye with tagging them by myself. They are all proven older cows. My husband does the farming,so I check cows and keep track of the books. It's to me gentics, genetics, genetics. We buy hereford bulls with the darker pigment skin on there scrotum and proven genetics in our angus. We have mostly New trend breeding in our herd. Bottom line it's balls and disposition on the angus. You will not succeed without either...IMHO......
 
Balls???????? Did that young lady just say balls??????????????? Oh my goodness! :shock: :shock: :shock:

And to think, my grandmother refered to them as "he cattle." :lol:
 
Mrs. Bowring was a dignified lady rancher neighbor. She was appointed to take over as a United States senator representing Nebraska when the regular elected one died. Later she was appointed to be on the Federal Parol Board. When she retired from national government jobs, she continued to ranch until her death.

One time, a local veterinarian received a phone call from Mrs. Bowring. She explained, "Doctor, I have a bull that is not romancing the cows properly." :-)
 
Hi to everyone this is Bev in Wwest Dakota and this is a hereford ranch with black bulls on teh young stuff fopr more profit in the fall and don't know who mentioned only getting light calves from hereford cows but they must have had bad bulls and not good cows as we alsways have hereford calves over 500 and this last fall our steers came within 3 lbs of the baldy steers so you can get good ones if you want.
We kept most of the hereford heifers but of what was sold they hit 400 and that was the lighter ones.
We are the third generation family on this ranch and only went to balcks when the markets got really bad and then herefords weren't wanted at ll. Some on said the year of 73 they sold some for 30cents and dont' understand that as that was a good year for us and then down hill from then again and not back on top again. Haven't even had to deal with teh banker for teh last 4 years and that is good news all around.
My this is a beautiful Easter sunday and we got a little moisture on thursday and can use more but we don't want any big storm with this calving going on/ We started on teh 19th and are doing fairly well. No backwards ones yet and teh hereford heifers are having theirs pretty well by themselves so guess we got good low birth weight bulls on them this year.
Mangen angus would be glad to hear that. We have used his bulls for teh past 10 years.
I will admit their are problems with herefords but there are never to many you have to worry about running you down when trying to earmark a calf. We do get bad eyes yes but out of 300 head not that many.
My husband and his brother are doing it alone this year and both are getting older so don't want any big storms as then have to bring in teh big herd and lock them up and then have sickness. Lost one to scors from just this little storm but kind of out own fault as thought the calve had sucked and he hadn't. Will say when a hereford calf gets cold they don't get up and suck like a black one.
MRJ we had alot of backwards calves one year also and now we haven't had any for quite sometime and some cows can have them but never ahve seen a life one i dont' think.
Ok everyon ahve a good spring. Rain in May would be really nice. :lol:
 
Everybody could have got in the Wagayu business cheap yesterday-- Sold some bulls from Marchi Angus, Kalispell on Superior Video for around $1000 or less-- but even many of the angus bulls sold for less than $1000-- I think the top seller while I was watching was $2000... A couple of the Wagayu's had birthweights down in the 54 lb range- should be easy calvers.....
 
OT, who owns Marchi Angus? Are they new? I don't think I have ever heard of them before.

Lund's B-Bar Angus had their sale here on Saturday and had a great sale. Haven't heard the average but I think it could be over $2500. I had to leave before the sale was over, but when I left the average was over $3000 at that point. The bulls looked good. Fit, but not fat. Lots of repeat buyers.
 
Faster horses said:
OT, who owns Marchi Angus? Are they new? I don't think I have ever heard of them before.

Lund's B-Bar Angus had their sale here on Saturday and had a great sale. Haven't heard the average but I think it could be over $2500. I had to leave before the sale was over, but when I left the average was over $3000 at that point. The bulls looked good. Fit, but not fat. Lots of repeat buyers.
Click to expand...

FH- Their catalog shows Jon Marchi as owner and claim they been around since 1955-- I had never heard of them before last years Superior sale..Catalog leaves the impression they are more of a showring and dude type outfit....

I think you'd have loved those bulls of Gary's I looked at yesterday-- Quiet nice truly moderate framed bunch of bulls and cows- sure nice when you can go out and look at the mother of the bull-cows were plumb quiet even with a stranger walking thru them and calves at their side- sounds like they all have a lot of Shoshone Bob genetics in their pedigree... About had to push the bulls out of the way- either they were licking on you or waiting to get their back scratched-- He even has one that would make Kit Pharo drool- about a 4 frame with a 67 lb birthweight that weaned at 640 lbs--His legs can't be a foot long- a CM Lassen 882L son...Problem I ran into was all the RR Hero sons I was most interested in were sold--But maybe next year- I think he said he already had 19 Hero bull calves on the ground, with more to come, and should have quite a few bulls from him for sale next year. .....
 
Yes faster horses remember that year well and a few others that followed as we had hard times form then on for soemetime. Hoep things are going good for you now and we could all use some rain and hoepfully ti will come this month but sure dont want big snow storms altho some who do because they want run off, We are setting ok now for water but teh grass will be serious when we get ready to turn out. Will be feeding later than teh 1st of May if this keeps up tho but sure won't feed all summer as the husband says he will sell dwon first.,
Hoep teh brohter agrees with him.
So do you get to Billings much sinc eyou are in SE montana or is that in the other direction from you.
We are getting lots of wind today so what little moisture we did get the other day is gone as was 75 here yeserday and it is 60 with wind today.
April showers bring the grass and flowers so we can only hope.
Ok everyone have a good one. :roll:
 
Bev, we are just about the same distance from Rapid City as we are from Billings. I tend to like Rapid just a little better. It has more of the "Cowtown" flavor. Billings has gotten pretty 'yuppie' in the past several years IMO. However, I am so busy, I don't get to either place much. Maybe it is just that I am slow~

OT, thanks for letting us know about Funk's bulls. I think I have some folks here that would definitely be interested. What is he asking for them? Did you say $1500-$2500? That sure should work!! Does he have some OCC bred cattle as well as the Shoshone? Our Shoshone bulls were a little more framey that I thought they would be, but still okay.

We did get a Crook Mtn. Really Windy out of a Conneally Timeline daughter at Lunds B-Bar Sale. I am pretty excited about him as a heifer bull and we also got a 5.5 frame bull that I think is an exceptionally good bull for what we want. Time will tell, of course, but he appears to be a meat machine right now out of a Pathfinder cow. I couldn't believe we were able to get him because we liked him so much (those usually cost a lot). The last time we got our first pick of bulls (at a sale in SW Mt.), the bull turned out to be a wild SOB right from the get-go and we returned him as fast as possible. We will not put up with that. This bull seemed very gentle in the ring. Just smelled of the cables and meandered around. As my husband says, "we can't have wild cattle on this Ma and Pa outfit." And I'm glad he feels that way. As a consequence we don't have wild or mean cows. (Regardless of what Hereford breeders think! LOL!!!)
 

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