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Changing calving seasons

L

LCP

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
240
Location
north central SD
We're giving serious consideration to moving our calving season to start mid April rather than mid March. For those who have made the change, what have been some of the suprises? Any new management considerations? Change in marketing plans? Every March I dream of calving a month later...next year my dream just might come true.

A little background...I live in north central SD. Cows winter on hay only, no grain. Very little scours, as we don't calve in lots. I'm thinking we might not save a whole lot on feed (or will I?) and vet, but the labor is definitely an issue right now. Thats the main reason for the switch.
 
I think the thing that most people struggle with is having confidence in your cows to let them go out and do what nature intended. I know it took us a couple years to just leave them alone. We had to become better at moving pairs also. Be prepared to be called lazy-I chose to embrace the label and became as lazy as I can be at every possible time. In our country it was better to move past May 1 to avoid the mud and late storms 90% of the time-I'm guessing your bare off and have grass ahead of us. If we leave a stockpile were done feeding at snow melt.
 
last year i started calving April 20, before that i always started about the 20th of March. this year we'll start April 20 again, next year might be May 1. if you do decide to go with late April calving, i'm 95% sure you won't regret it. i made the switch because i was tired of fighting mother nature ever single year. calving season is my favorite time of the year, but dragging new borns out of snow banks and runnnig half the herd through the barn was taking the fun out of it. plus i don't like treating sick calves and the dead ones are hard to sell.

one thing i did learn though is that a new born can still die in May if it wants to, would have never guessed it. :wink:
 
June calving is sounding good to me. So far today have had two heifers calve in the shed out of the elements. But with this frigid air both calves have had to go in the warmer and both got an initial shot of powdered colostrum to jump start them. Getting tired of fighting the cold and all the snow but not sure if April/May rain and mud is any better.

Maybe this spring I just won't put out the bulls and that should make calving a lot easier next year! :roll:
 
As others have said, you don't need to watch the cows as near as close as you do during bad weather. Our due date has been May 15 for the last 7 or 8 years. In that time I can count on one hand the number of cows that I have had to help. Most of them are the result of being overdue. Whether or not we have wrong presentations, I don't know. They have them on their own. We still watch the heifers a little closer than the cows but no where near like we did when Feb-March calving.

I don't know if or when we will see a time again when a 500lb grass calf isn't a good commodity to have. We had to give up on the calf fat, but we sure didn't see a drop in income because the grass calf has been so consistently good for us. This past year we sold too early to capture the high prices we had this winter, but we still got paid well enough to more than cover our expenses.

Don't think that all your problems will go away, you will just get different ones, but you will have a lot less labor involved in the calving and doctoring of newborns. Fewer, if any frozen ears and tails, very little scours and virtually no enterotoxemia or purple gut. We don't even use our barns anymore. Literally, I haven't had a cow in a barn for at least the last 8 years and our hot box hasn't been used in at least that long. All of our cows calve on summer grass and most of the calves don't see a corral until they are weaned.

I will quit running cows before I will go back to winter calving. I don't enjoy hard work or snow in my face enough to go back to dragging calves out of the snow and mud trying to save at least some of them during the wicked early spring storms that we can have.
 
I sold my Feb-March calves the end of January for $1050-$1100 per head. Not bad return on labor...getting a little tired of puttering in the shop all winter anyway, so looking forward to checking cows.
 
I am really starting to appreciate our fall calvers here! The calves always come a little smaller, so no calving trouble. They are born in September and October so the weather is usually good here. The calves are not as heavy at weaning as our springs, but the spring markets are usally higher than the fall. Plus if you want to keep them and grow them, weaning time and fresh grass come about the same time, and can make for some pretty cheap gains on calves, and then you can hit the July or August feeder market
 
Problem I see with fall calveing is you can't utilize rough hay. If you have alot of rough hay the cow's nurseing calves and the calves themselves stand still or go backwards. We had fall calvers and with our feeding system I culled them all.A neighbor on the otherhand gets by quite well but feeding dairy quality hay all winter does'nt pencil if a guy owns a pencil $500 worth of hay in a winter is alot of expense when you figure the other expences.He sell's big soggy calves in may but at what cost.
 
I know what you are talking about Denny as we fall calve and have a lot of lower quality hay.

A couple of possible remedies is calve in the Aug/Sept so that the calves are big enough going into winter and lactation is dropping when the weather gets bad. Creeping the calves with better quality hay also helps. Weaning at4- 5 months might also let you use the poorer quality hay for cows and better feed for calves.
 
We calve a group in March/April and then the majority calve in May/June. Here is what we see. You will have a higher % of live calves in the later calving. The labor is nearly gone. We have them in a 7 quarter section pasture and ride on them in the morning to weigh and tag, and then don't see them again until the next morning. The down side is you will get a lower % bred, when we breed, it is the hottest time of the year and the grass is usually dryer. If you market replacement females, it will be a bit harder as the heifers will be lighter. Also, when you sell, they will be lighter than what you are used to selling. We like the later calving better, but it is a bit harder on you when you have more opens than you would like, compared to the spring herd.
 
Angus 62 said:
BRG which do think is the bigger problem, the heat or the decline in the quality of grass?
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I think it is the heat, as we have a good hard later season grass. I have AI'd in 100 degree heat. Just isn't the best time to breed. But it is a great time to calve. We are trying to back it up a week or so.
 
BRG said:
We calve a group in March/April and then the majority calve in May/June. Here is what we see. You will have a higher % of live calves in the later calving. The labor is nearly gone. We have them in a 7 quarter section pasture and ride on them in the morning to weigh and tag, and then don't see them again until the next morning. The down side is you will get a lower % bred, when we breed, it is the hottest time of the year and the grass is usually dryer. If you market replacement females, it will be a bit harder as the heifers will be lighter. Also, when you sell, they will be lighter than what you are used to selling. We like the later calving better, but it is a bit harder on you when you have more opens than you would like, compared to the spring herd.
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Ditto on the labor, it is like a walk in the park compared to my years of experience with March April.

It does limit your market somewhat on replacements and breds but not as much as it use to because more people are making the change.

As far as opens we have not noticed any difference in our location, doesn't hurt to keep a few bulls to rotate if it does get really hot though.
 
Dylan Biggs said:
BRG said:
We calve a group in March/April and then the majority calve in May/June. Here is what we see. You will have a higher % of live calves in the later calving. The labor is nearly gone. We have them in a 7 quarter section pasture and ride on them in the morning to weigh and tag, and then don't see them again until the next morning. The down side is you will get a lower % bred, when we breed, it is the hottest time of the year and the grass is usually dryer. If you market replacement females, it will be a bit harder as the heifers will be lighter. Also, when you sell, they will be lighter than what you are used to selling. We like the later calving better, but it is a bit harder on you when you have more opens than you would like, compared to the spring herd.
Click to expand...

Ditto on the labor, it is like a walk in the park compared to my years of experience with March April.

It does limit your market somewhat on replacements and breds but not as much as it use to because more people are making the change.

As far as opens we have not noticed any difference in our location, doesn't hurt to keep a few bulls to rotate if it does get really hot though.
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It might not be an issue if we ran commercial cows with multiple bulls in a pasture, but we aren't, so we have 1 bull with a pile of cows. He might get to hot to due his job well. Just a guess.
 
Now that cull prices are up I'm going to be more diligent on pulling the bulls so no calves come after about June 10th.
The problem I have is with the summer born calves that hit the cold weather at 350#. They don't have a big enough 'furnace' to compete and gain with the bigger calves and I end up with a 351# yearling that looks like he77. They usually straighten out and sell good in August though.
You might also find that your cattle test your facilities more the less they are handled.
 
March/early april calving is the worse time for us. I am in the process of swithcing the herd to late october/november calving. I feed a little more hay but the quality that we can make in my area will support the cows. I also put up balage in the early part of hay season and the late part due to hard time drying it down to make dry hay. I also have an extremely good market for heavy weight feeders.
 
cowboykell said:
I sold my Feb-March calves the end of January for $1050-$1100 per head. Not bad return on labor...getting a little tired of puttering in the shop all winter anyway, so looking forward to checking cows.
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I'm far more curious to know your profit per head. Revenue tells half the story, expenses tell the truth.
 

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