And it Begins...

[Randi]

As of today we have 4 live calves out of 5 born. Our cows aren't due until Mar 7, but we bought 9 heifers due for Feb 20. 2 of those have calved, plus one of our heifers and a cow. The one that died, was a twin from the first heifer that calved. A matter of not checking things out well enough. She had both on her own, and from what we can tell both were born alive. BUT, we saw her with one live calf and thought that was it. The other wasn't far away, but we never looked around enough to find it. I found it the next night on the calving camera....coyotes were eating it. I am pretty sure they were just scavenging though, it was pretty stiff by then. One of those things that makes you PO'd at yourself... On the plus side, both calves were heifers, which is nice as we bought the bred heifers to raise replacements with.



Then we found a cow had calved, nice healthy bull calf, with 2 mamas :???: At first we thought a heifer had had him, which surprised me as I hadn't thought she was within about 3 weeks of calving. And I was right, but she sure loved him! He knew who his real mama was though, thankfully. Got them separated and the heifer spent 2 days at the fence bawling for him, the first she didn't even leave to go eat. Hope she loves her own as well as this one!

The cow is in the lead, the heifer is following. If you think chasing a calf with 1 mama is difficult, try one with 2 mamas...

Mama does NOT have black legs!

The orange tag is the bull calf and the white is the Twin heifer calf.

And today we had 2 more heifers calf, both had red heifer calves on their own. Things are looking good so far. Oh, and the weather has been pretty amazing!

 

[Ky hills]

Nice calves. I'm glad the weather has been good there too, been really good for calving here as well. We have 12 out of 14 so far. One came early, still born, and one was abandoned and got down in mud.

 

[Randi]

The beginning of calving season always seems depressing. It seems like it is when all the problems happen. Or perhaps it is just that there are fewer calves being born so the bad things stick in your mind.

We had 2 more live ones yesterday. Today they get to spend some time indoors as we had a major cool off last night and some snow.

 

[Nesikep]

Most of my losses in previous years have been near the beginning of the season too... I lost 2 in a row once (about 4 years ago), and kicked myself pretty good for one of them.. haven't lost one since.. cross fingers!

 

[Randi]

The newest one, born this Afternoon. What a good mama this first calver is

And another pretty new one.

 

[angus9259]

If I had as many calving as you do, I would probably invest in a ultrasound - detect twins if nothing else but also give me a good read of birth date and sex - for heifer calving.

 

[Randi]

All of our own cattle are ultrasounded, and dated. We will see how that goes. But, about half of what we are calving are not our cattle. Already we've had cattle calve over 14 days before their expected due dates....

 

[Randi]

A pretty baby

A Pair of First Calf Pairs

 

[creekdrive]

Nice pictures! I know you said in the other thread you were getting lots of first timers calving early, but have you noticed your mature cow herd being early too? Almost everyone we have talked to this year has said they were in full
calving swing 10+ days early this year. One guy not far from us was over a 1/3 done before his due date (I think he has roughly 150 cows). We are 2 & 1/2 weeks away from our first due date and so far there is a few cows bagging up a little but nothing looking real close.

 

[Randi]

We've had just a few cows, we were due yesterday but only 5/140 cows before the due date. About 10/50 heifers.