randiliana
Well-known member
Calving season has gone along quite nicely this year. The weather has been amazing, and is supposed to continue being very nice as well. Makes calving season easy. We installed a PTZ camera in our calving area and that has been a great tool, especially late at night. It is still tiring, of course, but not nearly as bad if you don't have to go out and check during the middle of the night. Just get up and check the camera.
Of our own cows, we have 115/160 on the ground right now, with the second cycle starting Apr 1. At this point we are 72% done on the first cycle. We are also custom calving 120 heifers and 50 cows for a couple of other people, and they are just getting started with Due dates of Apr 1 as well. OH, and we've only lost 1 calf at this point (looking around for some wood to knock on) and he just collapsed and died on us for no apparent reason that we can tell (even did a PM on him). Crossing our fingers that he's the only one this year....
This morning we did our once a week (7-5 days usually) sort where we pull off all the heavies and pen them in so we can watch them closer, and pulled in about 20 head. Then went to the first local Bull sale for a bit, prices seemed fairly strong. Came home to do some fencing and found a new calf (in the bunch we'd just sorted and turned back out, :roll: :shock: ). Not a big deal with the nice weather, but a PITA. Calf is a nice healthy bull calf.
Then as we finished up fencing, noticed a cow (with a week + old calf) had jumped in with the same bunch, searching for her calf, why she decided to look there is still a mystery, as we found him right where we had fed this morning with the main bunch of calved cows. Of course she had to destroy some fence in her search. Got her back out, and she found her calf... go figure...right where she'd left him
.
However, in this search for her calf we noticed another week+ old calf that didn't look so good..skinny as a rail, and wobbly as he walked. Mama was right there, a nice 8 year old cow, that has always raised a good calf. Calf was sucking, as we watched, but something was obviously wrong. Figured, probably mastitis in the cow, as the calf looked fairly healthy other than starving...Got them in, her down the chute, and DH tried to milk her. 2 quarters were unmilkable, one had grayish looking stuff coming out of it and the other was questionable. Cow is healthy, as far as we can tell, so we will dry her up, and she will head to town the end of Apr . Calf is now on the milk cow, he was pretty happy to get something healthy in his belly, and it didn't take any convincing to get him going on her...Her other adoptee might go short for a couple of days...
And in the end we found another fence crawler, apparently she believes that she should hang around with the calved cows, that they are getting better feed than what she was seeing... She's not going to calve for a few more weeks....Tomorrow we will capture her and she will get a little electrical therapy, so far it has slowed down all the others that thought fences didn't apply to them...The joy of spring time, the one time of year when the grass IS greener on the other side of the fence :lol: ...
Of our own cows, we have 115/160 on the ground right now, with the second cycle starting Apr 1. At this point we are 72% done on the first cycle. We are also custom calving 120 heifers and 50 cows for a couple of other people, and they are just getting started with Due dates of Apr 1 as well. OH, and we've only lost 1 calf at this point (looking around for some wood to knock on) and he just collapsed and died on us for no apparent reason that we can tell (even did a PM on him). Crossing our fingers that he's the only one this year....
This morning we did our once a week (7-5 days usually) sort where we pull off all the heavies and pen them in so we can watch them closer, and pulled in about 20 head. Then went to the first local Bull sale for a bit, prices seemed fairly strong. Came home to do some fencing and found a new calf (in the bunch we'd just sorted and turned back out, :roll: :shock: ). Not a big deal with the nice weather, but a PITA. Calf is a nice healthy bull calf.
Then as we finished up fencing, noticed a cow (with a week + old calf) had jumped in with the same bunch, searching for her calf, why she decided to look there is still a mystery, as we found him right where we had fed this morning with the main bunch of calved cows. Of course she had to destroy some fence in her search. Got her back out, and she found her calf... go figure...right where she'd left him
. However, in this search for her calf we noticed another week+ old calf that didn't look so good..skinny as a rail, and wobbly as he walked. Mama was right there, a nice 8 year old cow, that has always raised a good calf. Calf was sucking, as we watched, but something was obviously wrong. Figured, probably mastitis in the cow, as the calf looked fairly healthy other than starving...Got them in, her down the chute, and DH tried to milk her. 2 quarters were unmilkable, one had grayish looking stuff coming out of it and the other was questionable. Cow is healthy, as far as we can tell, so we will dry her up, and she will head to town the end of Apr
. Calf is now on the milk cow, he was pretty happy to get something healthy in his belly, and it didn't take any convincing to get him going on her...Her other adoptee might go short for a couple of days...And in the end we found another fence crawler, apparently she believes that she should hang around with the calved cows, that they are getting better feed than what she was seeing... She's not going to calve for a few more weeks....Tomorrow we will capture her and she will get a little electrical therapy, so far it has slowed down all the others that thought fences didn't apply to them...The joy of spring time, the one time of year when the grass IS greener on the other side of the fence :lol: ...
