Calving later?

[John SD]

"hands off calving" gcreekrch, that's what I like!

I used to lamb in Feb, so I could calve in March, so I could farm in April. I cut out the sheep and farming, and the cattle are a heck of a lot less work.

I consider myself to be in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in, but I still not as young and able-bodied as I used to be. IMO, later calving does and will function better on auto-pilot if I went haywire and got laid up during the crucial season.

2003 was the first later April calving season for me. I was calving 6 weeks after my Feb heart surgery. It took me all summer to get up to speed again as far as hard physical work goes. Sometime I'm gonna hafta at least get a new pacemaker which will slow me down some. I just hope it's in the off season whenever that happens. :wink:

 

[gcreekrch]

Another point... depending on the quality/ quantity of your winter feed earlier calving doesn't neccessarily make your calves weigh more. Some areas the climate seems to use up a big portion of the calf's intake just to stay warm. We sacrificed only about 30 lbs in moving our calving dates 5 weeks later. I wouldn't trade that 30 lbs and all the work and extra expense for love nor money. We have a little flock of sheep that we sell the lambs off of for local customers. We lamb Apr 15 on, butcher lambs from Sept 20 on. !0 year-dressed weight ave, 62 lbs. We have a neighbor that lambs in Feb, does feed her sheep, and dresses lambs the same time we do at between 30 and 45 lbs. It seems those lambs need grass at or before 1 month, or an expensive creep feed, or they just don't grow. We also mark all single ewe lambs and any we have to mess with, regardless, and they go to slaughter. 20 years since we started this culling procedure and most of our ewes are pretty self sufficient unless the weather interferes. (We also started this culling protocall with our hfr calves, I'll tell you in another 15 years if it worked :wink: )

 

[Circle M]

I was just at the sale barn looking over what they have for tommoro and the have some bred cows due in august, i was talking to one of the lot guys and he told me that when they calf that late and their bag is big they usually get a bad sunburn on it and also dry up alot faster , i was wondering if anyone else has seen this ??

 

[Aaron]

We expose the bulls to the cows for March 25th breeding, but anticipate the bulls and cows to take about 5 days to settle down and get used to their new surroundings in which ever pastures we put them in, thereby aiming for a April 1st start date. It has worked over the years as the old cows which have been to all of the pastures know what is going on and are the first to cycle and are usually bred to calve before April, and then a large slug of younger animals get bred after that initial five days.

We calve till beginning of June, but between the 1st week of May and beginning of June, it is more or less straglers that calve. The majority calve in April.

We also run a fall herd for calving August 15th to the beginning of October. They are really hands off, as we only see a fraction born. The cows are in terrific flesh and have had lots of exercise through the summer to handle an size calf, which usually ends up being quite smaller than spring calves, but with twice the life in them.

I do miss the big 600 lb + calves in the fall, as we used to due Feb/March calving. But I do not miss frozen ears, tails and ME!