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Night Calving

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Dakota Plainsman

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Since I'm fairly new here, this might have been talked about before.
I have a couple of neighbors that swear by feeding in the late afternoon
they get very few calves at night verses feeding in the mornings.
They say a person should start the night feeding at least 30 days in
advance. Was wondering if any one else has tryed this, if so, does it
really make that much difference. I have also been told it doesn't
make any difference.
 
well - how can you really prove it either way.

i do it every year with heifers. shut the gate on the feed in the morning and open it up at night. if i get two more to calf in the daylight - its worth it to me
 
Couple of years ago we calved out 250 first calf heifers for some guy from Illinois. Long, ugly story. We fed right before dark and estimated 85% of the calves were born during the day time. Several Universities have done studies on this, it has to do with the animals digestion process. It works, that's what I know :)
 
i've tried it twice and it didn't seem to make much, if any difference. but i know of a few that will swear by it :? i think this is a "depends on who you ask" kind of question.
 
I have been doing this practice for about five years now and believe it or not but I would say that 90% of my cows calve in the daytime. Most of them calve between 10 am and noon. I start feeding about three weeks before calving starts and feed around 5:30 at night. The story I was told is that a cow will not calve when she is hungry and so if you feed at night they will gorge themselves and then spend all night chewing their cudd and then calve in the morning. I would recommend trying it because if you are like me you need all the beauty sleep you can get. I check my cows around midnight and if everything looks ok I go to bed and dont get back up till 5:30 the next day.
 
we've been using that practice for 5 years now and I think it has an effect. We've had about 15% calve between midnight and 5 am, about 65% come between 6 am and 2 pm. We feed around 5 pm. Its sure not 100% but I think it adds a little bit of predictablity.
 
We tried it a couple of years and found no difference. I have noticed though that there tends to be a few calves born a couple of hours after feeding. Seems like they get full and relaxed and lay down and calve.
 
The only difference I've seen with feeding in the afternoon is that the cows walk more of their feed into the mud. We feed on the frost in the morning and the majority of our calves are born in daylight hours. Also if there is a breakdown I can repair it in the daylight and not be finishing feeding at midnight.
 
That friend of mine that they did the write up on in the last Cattlemen swears by it-he doesn't even go out at nights any more. When we pen calved I did it too mosrtly because my P.O.S Massey Tractor usually wouldn't start till afternoons-we had very few night calves.
 
I ALWAYS HAVE FEED AT NIGHT and way more than 50% of my calves come in the dark. My wife said "She's pretty sure I was born in the dark." :???: So I said" That"s when I do my best work." :lol: She said "Dream on." :oops: :oops:
 
gcreekrch said:
The only difference I've seen with feeding in the afternoon is that the cows walk more of their feed into the mud. We feed on the frost in the morning and the majority of our calves are born in daylight hours. Also if there is a breakdown I can repair it in the daylight and not be finishing feeding at midnight.
Click to expand...

I'm with you gc. IF I didn't start feeding till late afternoon, I would be feeding in the mud and working till late nite. Then if something would go wrong I'd be working all nite. I won't argue that the practice of feeding late doesn't cause more daylight calves. I'm just not sure the benefits are worth the trouble for me.
 
The next door neighbor and I with similar herd sizes and types tracked the times and compared for a couple of years. He fed in the evening I fed in the morning. Our records indicated very similar amounts born at night. I check at last light and first light. Too hard to find them out in the pasture in the dark anyway. More power to believing in a placebo but I like getting the work done in the morning. Now with the majority of the cows needs coming from grass it is a little hard to control when they eat.
 
We found that a cow, or more especially a heifer that calves at six a.m. is in labour at 4 a.m. We tried it for a year, and what happened was we would check at bed time, then again about 3 a.m., find a heifer in labour, stay up until she had the calf, which would be about 6 or 7, usually with no troubles anyway, then be tired for the rest of the day. We did have more calves born in the morning, but because of the weather we deal with, we didn't like to just give up night checks because we would have big troubles if we got a surprise calving out in the cold.

We went back to morning feeding, and still get most of our calves in the day time. Hubby has the same feeling about morning chores as some of you do. He worries about having something come up that delays him, like a breakdown or whatever, and then not being able to get chores done. He says if he starts in the morning he can handle surprises better because he still has all day to get things done.
 
I'VE TRIED THIS AND FIND THAT IF YOU "CONDITION" THE COWS BY STARTING FEEDING IN THE LATE AFTERNOON A COUPLE OF WEEKS AHEAD OF CALVING IT MAKE QUITE A DIFFERENCE.
i SWITCH TO GROUND HAY AT CALVING AND FEED IN BUNKS TO CUT DOWN ON WASTE AND DISEASE.
THERE IS JUST MY WIFE AND I AND I CHECK AT 10 PM AND IF NOTHING GOING ON GET UP JUST BEFORE LIGHT AND VERY SELDOM HAVE ANY PROBLEMS. YOU HAVE TOCHECK CAREFULLY WHEN YOU FEED AND SEE IF ANY ARE GETTING READY.AND PUT THEM IN IF THEWEATHER IS BAD. IT WORKS FORUS AND WE HAVEDONE THIS FORSEVERAL YEARS.
 
It seems that it has been pretty well established that there are fewer calves born during the night when they are fed in the evening, but there are other things to consider as well. It will not eliminate cows calving at night.
When they first talked aboutevening feeding my brother and I tried it. I made a list of the calves born from 6 Am to 6 Pm and the ones born at night. After we started farming that spring we went back to morning feeding. There was a big difference in the number of calves born at night.

We discontinued the practise though because if something went wrong or was wrong during the evening feeding we weren't done until after dark.

I am alone now and have fewer cows, I have gone back to evening feeding. I check just before bedtime then not until morning, unless the weather is bad.

I have watched the time of day when cows normaly calf for years. Most calves are born before midnight and after or just before daylight. Never the less I have saved a number of calves that may not have lived by being there at 2:30 in the morning. We noticed that cows often come to feed when fed in the morning, eat for maybe a half hour then go off and calf. This happened with evening feeding too. I think they were ready to calf but went to feed for a distraction.

When my brother and I were working together, I did the before bedtime check and the 2:30 check. It seemed I knew better which cows might calf, and where they might be, if I had been the one to do the bedtime check. My brother did the 5 AM check.
 
Dakota Plainsman said:
Since I'm fairly new here, this might have been talked about before.
I have a couple of neighbors that swear by feeding in the late afternoon
they get very few calves at night verses feeding in the mornings.
They say a person should start the night feeding at least 30 days in
advance. Was wondering if any one else has tryed this, if so, does it
really make that much difference. I have also been told it doesn't
make any difference.
Click to expand...

We feed at night and very seldon have a calf during the night.. But you better roll your tail out at the crack of dawn or earlier, cuz you will have calves by say 8:00 a.m.
 
I'm kind of the same as many of the others...Like to feed on the frost so I don't rut everything up to much- and like to get it over with in case I have broken hoses or other problems..Usually be afternoon my arthritis has me pretty stove up sometimes....Feeding early gives me a good chance to see any new ones that need weighing and tagging...
I usually only check cows a couple times a day- at feeding and again in the late afternoon to tag--otherwise they are pretty much on their own..Only time I check more often is when its extremely cold or stormy- and I have some lots I can move them into to keep a closer eye..

I'm not sure weather and barometric pressure doesn't play a bigger role in "when" a cow calves- rather than feeding time...
 
As a side note, I was night man calving heifers for the Mission-Onward ranch at Williams Lake in 1985. I would leave home after supper and be home for breakfast and our chores at eight AM. It was a good job as I had a cot in a heated room in the barn and if things were slow I got more sleep at work than at home. :D
Anyway, the heifers were little Herefords that hadn't been grown out well as calves and didn't breed very fast. They were also quite "active" when they saw a person on foot. The heifers were penned next to the horse barn and the shop so during the day with people coming and going they rarely stopped running to the far fence and certainly never calmed down enough to lay down. I checked them with a horse and could ride through them and sometimes sort one off without disturbing the whole bunch. I pulled lots and had to take 2 in for C-sections. All in all more than 100 of 145 heifers calved in my 10 hr shift.
 

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