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EC North Dakota | I have a great deal of experience calving and it’s not something I’m real proud of. Meaning a lot of my knowledge comes from mistakes.
My dad calved over 200 in feedlot conditions since long before I was born. I was helping pull calves and milking wild cows for as long as I can remember. Dad had many large barns so he would calve in January, sort off any cows that were showing and shut those in a large cattle barn at night so new ones were safe from the cold. Every pair was carried to the calving barn where they stayed 2 days for tagging, vitamins and castrating. Then they moved to another barn where the mothers stayed outside and babies went in and out. Back then we’d check throughout the day but they were on their own from 6 pm to 6 am.
Dad went to 400 and things got much harder with wetter barns and more cows fighting over calves etc....
When I was 24, he went to 800 with the same facilities but calving stretched from Jan 1 to May 15. Problems grew exponentially because of the wetter barns. If you locked in every cow that was showing, the cattle barn was a sloppy mess by 6 am. I remember going out to check calves at midnight and not being able to come back in until 8 am. We started a night shift so we didn’t have to put them in at night and feeding was done throughout the night. Any cows that hung back were run into calving pens. This worked really well if the night shift did his job. New Calves can’t lay out in -25 at all. One of our guys slept during his shift causing major trouble.
We had 8 barns set up for pairs. They were awesome with 40 calves per barn but at 100 calves per barn they needed to be checked and bedded constantly. Any scours was a major problem.
One Spring we had nearly 500 live calves with 2 dead when I left for 5 days skiing. When I got back all my friends were saying they heard we had a rough week. I asked my dad, nope all was good. The hired help was telling people he couldn’t haul the dead calves out fast enough. This was a major exaggeration but really pizzed me off. It seemed I couldn’t leave the farm ever.
If we had a rainy stretch or terrible storm, scours or pneumonia, you could lose more calves on an April afternoon than you saved the previous 3 months.
I quit helping with the cattle somewhere around ‘95 when I worked from Jan 1 to December 15 with 1 day off.
Dad went to June calving and checks cows every 3 days. His numbers are great one year and not the next. His vet bill is next to zero and labor dropped dramatically. I miss seeing the big January calves out on pasture but the June calves do well.
It’s incredibly difficult to be the best cattle farmer you can be and the best grain farmer you can be. They demand immediate attention at the same time.
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Calving on large herds Part 2
