Calving season 2010 thread for me

[Nesikep]

well, at the end of feb. we had an early and unexpected bull calf born, with a mother that is dumb as bricks, and a calf that is a bit premature, so we had some adventures with him, bottle feeding, and the nearly impossible task of making the cow stand still so it could nurse, but the little guy is up and about and jumping and running now, so he's all good, cow had a retained placenta, which she lost most of a few days ago, and we're keeping a close eye on her in case she gets an infection and goes downhill, but so far so good

sorry I haven't been on here much, but still have no internet at home

meanwhile, most of the calves should be born in april to our Gelbvieh bull, and I'll be posting pictures

Also, the calves we kept from last year (Remember the "chairman" heifer?) are all doing excellent and are in the 950-1050 lb range, so I'm really happy with them

Cheers all, and may the noses all come out first!

 

[rockridgecattle]

Just to be a bit cheecky...I would prefer the front hooves first...

 

[hillsdown]

Just to be a bit cheecky...I would prefer the front hooves first...

:lol2: Me too RR.. ;-)


Good luck with your calving season Nesikep.

 

[cmf1]

Hey Nesikep,
Can't wait to see the "chairmen" grown up a bit.
Mine just started with one bull calf.
Looks like they're gonna all run pretty close as of now. We'll see.
Looking forward to some pics.

 

[Nesikep]

Well, here's Maddy, the Chairman, a little bit grown up I'd say, the first pic is last fall sometime in november I think, so around 8 months, proudly wearing a bell

and here she is at exactly a year old... 49" high at shoulder, 51" at tail, and 19" across the hip...

I've been "weaning" her from the herd a bit because she is bound to become a yard cow, and she really isn't fond of the idea, she's mooing every time she sees us, and what's surprising is how acute her eyesight it... she knows it's no use mooing at my dad... I actually brought her in the shop to see how she'd behave... well, she was a little curious about everything, like the lathe, chainsaw, and etc, but otherwise she just wanted to follow me everywhere... I've never had a heifer so easy to lead

Sorry, there was no way I could get her to stand quite right and have her facing side rear leg back a bit

 

[2/B or not 2/B]

What a lovely heifer, I love her!

 

[Nesikep]

I love her too, she's a real doll.. but a loud mouthed one


As for calving season.. had bull calf #2 at 3 am last night, all 120 lbs of him, he's doing well, lively and sucking, which makes us all happy... expecting 2 more really quick here

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Nice heifer - she was much more impressive last fall. Looks like she lost quite a bit of body condition through the winter.
We're on a countdown - 5 calves left!!! 3 due NOW. Last 2 due 3-24 & 3-30.

 

[Nesikep]

she is actually quite fat, just maybe a little hungry.. though she won't be a big bellied cow, she'll be more of a big frame type.

Our calving season is just starting up really now, I think we are done with the calves from the bull with ED, got 4 of them instead of 16, the rest will be gelbvieh sired, and we're curious how they will turn out to look, we're keeping one bull calf for our own use as a bull, he was the lightest bull calf of the 3 bulls this year at 115 lb (not for heifers), but was born within an hour of the water breaking without the cow breaking a sweat, they're really long calves and have an excellent head shape, so we'll give it a shot... he was also up in 15 minutes and sucking another 10 minutes later, and he nearly ate the entire udder... he was hungry...

As far as raising a bull calf for good behavior, is there anything I should pay attention to? I guess no bad habits of rubbing on you or bucking the head... anything else?

this is him

 

[Nesikep]

well, we've had a few more since my last visit here, we're into the Gelbvieh sired stock now, they look pretty good, less red, more of a chocolate brown, but not as awful colored as we were bracing ourselves for. one of our better cows decided she needed to double up, so she's got a pair of twins to look after, and it didn't take her long to figure out how to count to two... so 11 have calved, and we have 8 to go

WTF is up with the bull-heifer ratio these years for us? last year was 10 bulls and 5 heifers, and this year it's more of the same, we have 8 bulls and 4 heifers so far... really not good for trying to build up a herd, but it's nice at the sale yard

I'll try and post more pictures... I've got another calf like Maddy this year.. doesn't look the same for coloration, but identical temperament... I'll show you some pics of her for sure

 

[Nesikep]

WEll, we've had a few more calves, some of them real beauties, my "horse" calved last night, 120lb heifer calf, we have 5 more to go, and 4 of them should be coming up really quick with 1 straggler. I was wondering if there are any people who wouldn't keep a heifer based on a high birthweight, assuming she is sound in all other respects. her mother has great hips (140lb calf last year unassisted) and makes 6 gallons of milk a day and is completely docile

so far we have 3 heifers we will probably keep, 1 is 7/8th shorthorn, the others are about 3/8th shorthorn 1/2 gelbveih

 

[cypressfarms]

Nesikep,

How big are your moma's to calve 100+ pound calves unassisted? I would be scared to death with calves this big - but then I can't be there for each birth. I was mad because I had to pull one calf this year from a heifer, and he was right at 90 pounds. I only have one more calf to go this year...

Maddy looks real nice!

 

[Nesikep]

Most our cows are in the frame 6-7 area, we only had to help 1 cow this year, and that was because the calf was hind legs first, otherwise any cow we have seems to do just fine with a 120 pounder, the record was Tizia last year with a 140 lb bull calf, up and standing at 5 am (I had checked them at 1 am), this year she made a 120 lb heifer calf

yesterday the mother of the calf in the previous pic had a 120 lb bull calf, and from the time the feet showed to the time it was on the ground was about a half an hour...

We have 2 left to go, one is due any day, she's the oldest cow at 14 years old, and one heifer who'll calf in about 2 weeks. we used to breed heifers at 2 years old, and last year due to the gelbvieh bull, we bred them at 1 year... I think we'll go back to 2 years though, so much less hassle, they have great milk the first year, and you don't have to be there when they calve. one of our little heifers calved about 2 weeks ago and she doesn't have enough milk to feed him, we have to give him a bottle every day to prevent him form starving. they also seem to be better mothers having an extra year to watch and learn.

We expected the calves from this gelbvieh bull to be much lighter bw's, it's not looking like much of a change though, the average is down maybe 15 lbs from 115lb average to 100 average on the bull calves, and from 100ish on the heifers to 90 or so... we've only had 3 of them under 75 lbs, 2 of those were a pair of twins.
Meanwhile, our heifer/bull count is 7 to 12, with one left to go

 

[3waycross]

I would say a 15% decline in birth weights ain't bad. After all he was a Gelbvieh Bull not a faith healer. There is only so much a bull can do. Your cows still account for 1/2 the genetics on those calves.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

When you keep replacement heifers that weighed 120# at birth, you have to expect them to have 100# (+) calves 1st year.
Your 2-yr olds should be milking better than that. Either they weren't quite grown out enough prior to breeding/calving, or the genetics were bad. 2-yr olds won't milk as well as a mature cow, but they should more than "hold their own". I see very little difference in weaning weights for my 2-yr olds vs cows - considering there is like a 60# difference in adjustments by breed assn's - I don't ususally see that much difference "over the scale" weights.
But, my yearlings will weigh over 65% of their mature weight at breeding.
It's a trade off. Either you invest extra quality feed into your replacements to get them "working" at 2 - or you slow raise them, with less input and wait til they're 3 to go to work.

 

[Nesikep]

well, with these heifers we had PLANNED to breed them at 2 years old, and when we got the gelbveih bull we changed our minds... I'm sure they could have had a bit more feed in the winter, but the other two seem to be doing well... this particular heifer's mother is a fantastic cow, but it just doesn't seem that heifers from her do well, we kept another heifer from her last fall and we're regretting it, she may end up as freezer meat... Meanwhile, the mother's full blooded sister has given us two great heifers... go figure


Here are some pics of this years calves, including the new "Chairman of the board".. she's identical in character and build to "Maddy" last year, just has different spots

If the images are clipped on the right hand side, just go to the album at
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v153/Rx7man/Moo/ and see the originals

this one we're debating on keeping, we'll see how she is in the fall

this one is 2 weeks old in the pic, she was the calf from my "horse", born at 120 lbs, she's a candidate to be kept

And everyone needs a good lickin once in a while

and The old girl Rosie with the swinging udder

 

[Nesikep]

And finally we're all done, the one heifer we were waiting for calved the day before mother's day (I guess she knew).. and the count is 14 steers, 6 heifers, we scored 20 calves from 19 cows.. I'll say it was a successful season! Hope all of yours was as well

 

[Angus Cowman]

And finally we're all done, the one heifer we were waiting for calved the day before mother's day (I guess she knew).. and the count is 14 steers, 6 heifers, we scored 20 calves from 19 cows.. I'll say it was a successful season! Hope all of yours was as well

you sure can't complain about that

 

[Nesikep]

Yep, I'm happy, and tomorrow the cows will be happy too.. out to pasture, I'm feeding my last couple bales out tonight... bull will be released as well

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

That's a great feeling to turn them out on pasture. Ours have been on full pasture for just about a month now. Just finished 45 days of AI & just turned a bull out that we leased from Mountain View Farm, in Pa. - will leave him out for about 21+ days.
Breeding season is a little longer this year, because we put embryos in using our "regular" cows (not recip quality) and we wanted any of them that didn't settle to the egg to have plenty of time to sluff it & get AI bred so we started a full week earlier on them & went ahead and bred anything else that was standing.