Changing calving seasons

[Justin]

Why does everyone assume that winter calving means you have to pull calves? :? We're calving right now, and it's been COLD. Our so called extra labour consists of putting those closest to calving in the barn at night. Hardly overwhelming. On average, the only time a calf gets pulled around here is if something's not coming straight, or it's tangled up twins. If these cows were calving alone in the pasture, what's the odds of someone being there to save the calf? Slim. So that low maintenance summer calving cow just ate a whole winter's feed, and lost the calf. But at least no one had to go and help her, so that's good. You may have fewer problems pasture calving, but when you do have problems they are bigger ones.

Also.....Why does everyone also assume that winter calving has higher costs? It ain't necessarily so guys.

Our cows come home from pasture in October, wean their calves, then graze corn until the end of January (about 50 -55 cents a day cost on that). They start calving in Feb. and leave the yard in April. They spend about 70 days in the yard eating hay. Then they go to the small breeding pasture until end of May when it's back to the summer pasture. The only grain the calves get is a bit of creep when they're really little to prevent coccidiosis. A ton of creep does a hundred plus calves. In October they are in the 600 pound range, having eaten one ton of feed.

Compare that to later calving cows. Guys grass their cows, just like us. They bring them home about the same time. They may feed stockpiled forage, or bale graze, so the cow feed is less. But.... is it cheaper to wean a smaller calf, feed it to take it through winter, grass it for the summer, then, as some do, sell it a year later? What if a drought hits? Can anyone afford to sell those 300 pound calves in the fall if there's no feed? Between a rock and a hard place is what I believe that is called.

Maybe it's just us having lived through 20% interest rates years back, but around here, time is money. I remember when the profit on a batch of feeders could be wiped out by interest costs by holding them for just an extra month.

However, the trend to late calving has been a real bonus for the donkey business. I have yet to need to advertise to sell a guard donkey.
:wink:

Excellent job Kato. :agree: Yeah you never hear anything about the death loss,just how much less work it is.Like i said in a earlier post i pull roughly 8% of my calves.That is mainly for calves not coming the correct weigh,there is the odd big calf.I was at the neighbours one evening during calving time,by the time i went home that night.We had pulled 3 backwards calves in a row.All 3 of those calves lived because we were there to help them,how many of those calves would have died in a low maintenance system?

:roll: i can only speak for my operation, but calving later here does not mean NEVER checking cows. for the record, i can't remember the last backwards calf that i lost.
question for you 3words, how may cows do you calve out? 15,20 maybe 30?

 

[Faster horses]

Funny how those cows can have a backwards calf on their own,
but they can and do. We've even watched them.

I don't know what it is about calving on grass, but things do seem
to go better. On the Powder River in Wyoming everything was calved
outside in the hills except the heifers and out of 600 head very
seldom was there a problem in the cows calving outside. We didn't
know if the grass had something to do with it or it was excercise.
They were bred primarily to smaller bw bulls and I think that
eliminates some problems when calving outside too. Well, I am
sure it does. And I could count on one hand the amount of calves
we have pulled out of old cows in a boatload of years. Smaller
calves eliminate a lot of excercise on a persons part, too.

This is just MHO. I'm not trying to convince anyone. It just worked in some of the situations we were part of. There is more than one way
to skin a cat, just depends on how mucjh work you want to do skinnin' it.
:wink:

 

[flyingS]

The savings in labor is due to the fact that you do not have to be up with cattle during the night as well as you don't have to bring ever calf to the barn during a storm. Obviously there is a difference in climate for producers, further north winter may last longer. Generaly by May cold weather and snow storm are over here, with the exception of a few years ago. A good grazing management sceme will enable a person to be able to graze through most of the winter feeding only through the bitter cold and snow cover that can not be grazed through. The other consideration would be the number of cows a person is taking care of. I would be realy comfortable calving a large number of cows myself from April on, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have also calved 200 head of cows from Feb to May and thought that the light was never going to come. I calved that set of cows alone, I am glad I did not have a family because while I would have been in the same house I would have never seen them. I was up all night and had to feed and pair out and tag all day long. Even though we only got a few calves each day, if I missed one they froze to death. Regardless a set of 2yr old heifers require more care than a cow for obvious reasons, no matter when they calve.

 

[flyingS]

I asked a friend one time while he calved in Feb. He gave me a very reasonable and well educated answer. It fits his program and that is great. If it is not broke don't fix it or maybe you should break it. Change is a hard thing for many. The thread is about the advantages of calving later and most of them have been pointed out. Not trying to convince anyone to change, just trying to help those that want to.

 

[Northern Rancher]

Has anybody who went from calving in winter to calving on grass ever changed back to winter. I did the calve early/big calf deal for years-I was good enough at it to be in some breed ads. I bowed my neck and dug in and told the sunshine calvers they were lazy too. We got caught calving 200 heifers in March due to BSE-the outfit that wanted them backed out. We got it done but the family said that was the last time. The way I see it Winter calving=more labour, bigger calves, more stress-more profit that is the big question

Grass Calving-considerably less labor-smaller calves in the fall if that's when you sell-they all end up the same size at the kill floor, alot less stress-profit-same thing it depends on the outfit raising them

Some operations have no choice as to their calving season-but farming isn't one of them-cows can go out and be cows perfectly well on their own.I know if I had to calve cows with my fat old cancerous body right now I wouldn't have any.

There is a sort on your cows as you first switch from early to late calving for sure-just as there'd be trying to calve May calvers in a pen the first time. Handling problems with pasture calves are way overdone-it's not the quantity of handling on stock it's the quality.

 

[Nicky]

We tried it and are back to winter calving. Our grass has a CP value of 3.9% in Aug So that is not good for breedback and/or calf growth. Not to mention a cow can't milk and maintain her body weight. It was a very expensive experiment for us. We loved the calving part of it, but not the rest of it.

Like 'H said, in this country the calves have got to be big enough to tail long distances. So we either have to calve now/here, or in late May and june at the leased place, which was what we tried. Also didn't like the heat, had calves dehydrate from being too hot to get up and suck. If we were set up to calve in April and May that would be different.

I was going to stay out of this but couldn't help myself :wink:

 

[3words]

Why does everyone assume that winter calving means you have to pull calves? :? We're calving right now, and it's been COLD. Our so called extra labour consists of putting those closest to calving in the barn at night. Hardly overwhelming. On average, the only time a calf gets pulled around here is if something's not coming straight, or it's tangled up twins. If these cows were calving alone in the pasture, what's the odds of someone being there to save the calf? Slim. So that low maintenance summer calving cow just ate a whole winter's feed, and lost the calf. But at least no one had to go and help her, so that's good. You may have fewer problems pasture calving, but when you do have problems they are bigger ones.

Also.....Why does everyone also assume that winter calving has higher costs? It ain't necessarily so guys.

Our cows come home from pasture in October, wean their calves, then graze corn until the end of January (about 50 -55 cents a day cost on that). They start calving in Feb. and leave the yard in April. They spend about 70 days in the yard eating hay. Then they go to the small breeding pasture until end of May when it's back to the summer pasture. The only grain the calves get is a bit of creep when they're really little to prevent coccidiosis. A ton of creep does a hundred plus calves. In October they are in the 600 pound range, having eaten one ton of feed.

Compare that to later calving cows. Guys grass their cows, just like us. They bring them home about the same time. They may feed stockpiled forage, or bale graze, so the cow feed is less. But.... is it cheaper to wean a smaller calf, feed it to take it through winter, grass it for the summer, then, as some do, sell it a year later? What if a drought hits? Can anyone afford to sell those 300 pound calves in the fall if there's no feed? Between a rock and a hard place is what I believe that is called.

Maybe it's just us having lived through 20% interest rates years back, but around here, time is money. I remember when the profit on a batch of feeders could be wiped out by interest costs by holding them for just an extra month.

However, the trend to late calving has been a real bonus for the donkey business. I have yet to need to advertise to sell a guard donkey.
:wink:

Excellent job Kato. :agree: Yeah you never hear anything about the death loss,just how much less work it is.Like i said in a earlier post i pull roughly 8% of my calves.That is mainly for calves not coming the correct weigh,there is the odd big calf.I was at the neighbours one evening during calving time,by the time i went home that night.We had pulled 3 backwards calves in a row.All 3 of those calves lived because we were there to help them,how many of those calves would have died in a low maintenance system?

:roll: i can only speak for my operation, but calving later here does not mean NEVER checking cows. for the record, i can't remember the last backwards calf that i lost.
question for you 3words, how may cows do you calve out? 15,20 maybe 30?

I am at 150 cows at the present moment,and going to look at another 40 bred heifers hopefully this afternoon.I calve these cows basically by myself.Why?

 

[Northern Rancher]

Boy your grass must dry off bad-so you can't stockpile any for early spring either? Or can you turn out on banked grass with protein supplement?

 

[Justin]

Excellent job Kato. :agree: Yeah you never hear anything about the death loss,just how much less work it is.Like i said in a earlier post i pull roughly 8% of my calves.That is mainly for calves not coming the correct weigh,there is the odd big calf.I was at the neighbours one evening during calving time,by the time i went home that night.We had pulled 3 backwards calves in a row.All 3 of those calves lived because we were there to help them,how many of those calves would have died in a low maintenance system?

:roll: i can only speak for my operation, but calving later here does not mean NEVER checking cows. for the record, i can't remember the last backwards calf that i lost.
question for you 3words, how may cows do you calve out? 15,20 maybe 30?

I am at 150 cows at the present moment,and going to look at another 40 bred heifers hopefully this afternoon.I calve these cows basically by myself.Why?

just curious.

 

[Big Swede]

If I had to assist even 1% of my mature cows because the calf was too big I would be very reluctant to calve on grass. 3words is the one that brought up that subject. I guess we have selected for calving ease long enough that that thought never even crossed my mind when I made the switch. I used to have quite a few tail first, leg back, head first no feet, upside down, etc. calves when pen calving but that issue disappeared on grass.

 

[LazyWP]

I will chime in an this from a totally different perspective than most of you. With us taking cattle in, and we turn in the 1st of May here on the river, the guys have to calve early. The cattle are trucked nearly 200 miles, then dumped out on the river for the first month. I wouldn't want to have anything come in here that wasn't at least a couple months old to do that with.

 

[Northern Rancher]

Why can't they calve there?

 

[mytfarms]

Why can't they calve there?

If he's talking the Dismal River where a lot of cows summer, I can see the issue. My uncle trails pairs down the river each year, and I believe that is a 12 or 15 miles ride one way. I wouldn't want to trail (or haul) that far with heavies, and a calf certainly needs some grow to make that haul. Of course, a really radical management change allows a complete change of the system, but for some that just doesn't fly. Here at home, we don't haul or drive cattle more than a few miles, so we can calve out on leased pasture and still go check for calves every day.
MYT

 

[Northern Rancher]

Just curious was all.

 

[littlejoe]

A few years ago I bought a small ranch from an elderly gentleman. He asked if I wanted to buy his cow herd as well . I asked when they started to calve...he said he never pulled the bulls. That way he could take a pickup load of calves to town anytime he needed a calf check. :lol:

I usually leave the bulls in for about ninety days, figuring a late calf is better than no calf.

I agree. With a late calver, you got options.

With an open cow--you don't.

 

[George]

I will leave the bull in for 90 days but then I will cull any that don't calve in the first 60.

I agree that a late calf is better than no calf but I don't have to put up with late calves for long. Any cow that calves after May 31st goes to market at weaning time along with any opens.

Good nutrition and good mineral programs promote quick breed backs and as such we need to strive for the best and cull the rest. It does not cost more to keep a good cow than it does to keep a poor one.

 

[cowboykell]

One reason no one goes from May calving back to Feb. calving is the fact it's harder to shorten your calving interval. Moving your start calving date ahead one month is hard to do.

 

[LazyWP]

Why can't they calve there?

It wouldn't hurt my feelings a bit, but we have 4 miles of Niobrara frontage, and that is what greens up first, so that is where the cows go first. Our river ground is totally unlike any ground I have ever ridden anywhere else. Terrible thick Cedar, along with Pine, Ash, and just for good measure, plum thickets. I have had lots of open country cowboys tell me they won't help bring cattle out of the river pastures. Takes a good dog, and a good sense of direction. Every year it takes 3 trys to gather 3 small pastures. I just don't think there is anyway I would want to calve on the river.

 

[Northern Rancher]

I doubt it's any thicker than a willow muskkeg-I meant why not turn them out and let them calve or are yotes a problem.

 

[Denny]

One reason no one goes from May calving back to Feb. calving is the fact it's harder to shorten your calving interval. Moving your start calving date ahead one month is hard to do.

Thats my thoughts how do you move a whole herd up 2 or 3 months.Pretty tough in my opinion.Getting them to calve late not a problem.