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East of Broken Bow | Just to give another angle on the later calving, we haven't had a calf yet. While the neighbors are looking like extras for the walking dead, all I have to do for probably another week, is keep the cows from getting out, and fed/watered. Until daylight savings time hit, I was in the house by 5:30 or 6 PM for the day, not heading out again until morning. I'm not saying this to brag how smart I am or anything, but to point out, there came a time where the family became more important than the cows, or maybe more accurately, more important than that last 50 pounds on the calves in the fall.
Another thing I might add, with late calving, can come late weaning. We also raise corn, and run the cows on the stalks. We bring the cows 'home' let them get past their fighting stage they always have when you mingle them, and then wean the calves. I have found that calves that have run on cornstalks, get a taste for corn, and when you wean them, if you top dress a little cracked corn, they start eating sooner than if you wean them off grass. The late calving allows the calves to still be on the cows during harvest, so we can concentrate on harvest, rather than doctoring bawling calves, then when the calves are weaned, harvest doesn't take away from the time we can spend getting the calves weaned and settled.
Also, our calves hit selling weight later, in the seasonal upswing, rather than the low, so I really don't think we are penalized in terms of selling price. Even if we do get a little less, I think it is offset by how much less we feed the cows. Cows with calves on them during the cold weather eat a LOT, and we also get a couple weeks of basically 'free' feed grazing stalks (we have enough stalks to last through January if it doesn't snow a lot). Also, the time we don't spend slogging through mud and snow carrying a chilled calf, is time we can spend going over equipment, so its ready when we are. I do not regret one minute, that we will be calving March 20 instead of Feb 20. The biggest hurdle to overcome, was the 'we always did it that way' and the 'everyone else does it this way' line of thinking. | |
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am I cut out for this?
