+1

One factor that I have not seen discussed in these calving threads is our age. As we get older (which I don't usually admit to) and perhaps lacking some of the farm or ranch or physical facilities that others have we just can't check on cows frequently during calving.  My home group calves in a pasture which is half woods and about a half mile Ranger ride away across a coulee from my house. Once or twice a day during daylight hours is about the max I can check them.

My second group is a mile and a half or two miles away, in a combination hillside and wooded area. Once a day is about the max I can regularly check this group.

Early in my cattle experiment I figured I would start calving in late March early April as some neighbors do, putting bulls in in mid June.  Had a terrible snow/ice storm right around April 1 in 2013 I think it was and lost a number of calves. It was painful.

So I moved bulls in back to July 4th as some other neighbors do, which gives a theoretical start of calving at April 12 according to the AHA. Better except some calve a bit earlier and it is still often the mud season here in early April with no grass growing yet.

After reading a couple of Ben's posts I moved bulls in back to around July 23 which gives a theoretical start of calving of May 1. This has worked for me. I can't remember losing a calf in the past few years since start of calving in May on green grass.  It's tough seeing calves running around neighbors pastures when my cows haven't even started yet, especially in an early spring year. But it works for me.

Beginning in late April I drive the Ranger around and check for new calves every day, but mostly so I can identify which cows have calved and get the info into Cattlemax. I could also see if there was any calving trouble but by buying only registered bulls with high CED epds, retaining most heifers then breeding them to a different high CED bull, I now rarely have any calving issues at all, even though my numbers have increased to about 50 cows and heifers calving this spring.

May calving means my first yearlings harvested the following year are a bit smaller than I'd like, however by choosing high growth EPD bulls such as 33 and 907 my early calves are getting larger earlier in the year following birth when I need beef inventory to sell.

So many different ways to raise beef. Some of us physically can not check cows every few hours so one approach is to address calving in other ways, especially as we get older and operate without additional help.

Good threads.