First calf spring 2011

[regolith]

85 of 187 calved - no still not halfway, but it looks like the heifers will be mostly in in another week or two, which is as it should be. 36 of 54 heifers calved so far (66%) and we're just a couple of days before the 3-week point for them.
I'm rapt at some of the udders my heifers have calved down with - couldn't ask for better. A few not so good. Culled the one with the wide teats yesterday, along with an older cow that I suspected has Johne's. The 3/4 2nd calver is on about her fourth chance - I put her in the milking herd on Sunday and she's doing fine, so as long as her production is up to speed she'll be able to keep herself off the cull list.

The BW index is mostly production with some weighting for type and temperament - I'd have to look it up to be certain what's in it. But when you look at the full proof, there's a breeding value called 'calving difficulty'. Sometimes it's not listed against Jerseys because they're always minus (the values are for all dairy breeds, not within a single breed). You have to check the BV against the current NZ cow average BV to get an idea what it means though, because the numbers get revised regularly. Friesian average calving difficulty used to be 6, then 4, this year it's 3.3.
Calving difficulty is one of the first things I look at in a proof, but I'll also look at the liveweight, stature and rump width BVs which have an influence. High liveweight and stature tells you the mature cow will be large - so the calf probably will be too. Rump width is a maternal calving ease factor, I like to see positive values, otherwise I could be mating my cows to easy calving sires and producing heifers that themselves can't calve readily.

The Simmental and Angus are from LIC & Ambreed so are 'dairy beef' - selected specifically for low birthweight. When you order the semen you're just ordering the breed, and don't find out the individual bulls until the straws arrive. Because the Simmental is left over from 2009, I think I've got Puketawa Polled Ludger and a Rissington bull in the bank, so I could probably look them up if I knew how.
The Simmental is used across low producers or cows that I don't want to breed from for other reasons. Just the larger cows; the Angus I use a bit more readily & I think I've got about 8 or 9 straws of short gestation Jersey in storage that I can use on any very small cows I don't want to breed from.
I'll find out what the bobbies are worth when I get paid for them (which should have happened already, but nothing's come through the mail). Usually I average about $10 a calf with the heaviest calves at $15 - 20.
There's a pure Friesian bull in the paddock now and I'd been wondering what to do with him, because I might get a few good calves this year a week or two weeks apart - I can't put together a group for a buyer. I've decided to tag him, starting with the higher tag numbers, and probably by the end of calving I'll have a fine-looking group that I can sell either as milk calves or as weaners. A good number of the heifers will be sold anyway, as there's some matings have been done last year I'm just not prepared to take the risk of carrying those calves through.

That bull calf is another story... he was born last night and I milked his mum this morning, she's an eight year old cow, udder is just fine but her teats were fat and dirty. A little concerned, I left the milking pit to go and look at the calf. However he got it without cleaning up her teats, I decided he'd had a good feed.
After milking, in the springer paddock there was a Jersey cow cleaning off her newborn heifer - and that Friesian bull attached to one of her quarters. So I'd say he got a feed alright, but it wasn't off his mum. Most likely one of the cows I just put in the milking herd that had been calved four days already.

There's so much this time of year conspires to teach you how little you know about anything! One of the calves that I was going to take into the calf shed today so her mum could go into the milking herd, I had to push every step of the way to the milking shed this morning. By half way there, I knew I was handling a very sick calf - and she'd been fine yesterday. I suspected scours but she wasn't scouring. She walked all the way into the calf shed, collapsed in the corner with her ears down and mouth drooling and has been playing a very convincing "I'm dying" act ever since. Still not scouring. I've tubed her twice with electrolytes because she can't/won't suck.
Now I'm wondering if it's pneumonia or if another cow trampled her and she's got internal injuries. Or if she hadn't been feeding right and I somehow missed it.

 

[regolith]

Second assisted calving of the season yesterday - and again, the cow had more sense than I did! I tried to leave her behind in the paddock to get on with calving, but she insisted on coming to the shed with the herd and it wasn't till we were practically at the shed that I got close enough to see that the tips of those feet showing inside the water bag were definitely upside down. Backwards calf.
That was a hard pull, because the legs weren't straight and for some reason tugging on them didn't straighten them out. When one finally popped out the whole length I managed to get the other one too and then the calf slid straight out... and decided after a few minutes that it was breathing and alive.

I brought him into the calf shed later that night, because he still wasn't on his feet and she had apparently abandoned him. He's standing no problem now, but I think I did pull his legs a bit too hard.
I thought that was a real tough pull and took way too long, but when I started up the bike again the clock showed half an hour - about 28 minutes - since I'd turned it off. In that time I'd put the cows into the yard, gone into the dairy for the ropes and lube, walked 124 round into the vet bail, pulled the calf, lifted the calf to drain his lungs and then tickled his nose &c till he was breathing and could be given to her to lick, returned to the dairy and washed up the ropes and hung them up to dry.

Geneva calved - so much for being a late calver, she hasn't got much milk but she calved in the first cycle - and while being perfectly attentive to her new calf, bowled over any other calf with the temerity to walk within several metres of her. I checked her late at night and she was sniffing other calves but not being aggressive, so hopefully she's settled down - otherwise I would have taken her calf off her and put her straight in with the milkers.

The sick heifer calf hasn't died yet, still don't know if she'll pull through but she's looking marginally better than she did yesterday.
Better go get some work done while the weather's still good Someone west of us was getting heavy rain yesterday, a couple of spectacular flashes of lightning just before dark.

 

[waihou]

Thanks regolith, it's interesting following the daily happenings of a dairy herd. It's so much easier with the beefies-you just have to check they are getting along alright with the calving and bonding and that the calf is getting fed-then stand back and watch!
Gosh it all sounds so easy put like that!

Well so much for the snow we are due to get, although it is more likely tomorrow it will hit here. Lovely sunny afternoon, mild conditions and a little bit of moisture (5mm) to moisten the grass overnight!

We have 17 more to go, so 42% done in the first 2 weeks.
Here are some of them today enjoying the fine weather!

A perky looking heifer, I've called Gentian, born on Monday 8th, aged 5 days now.

This heifer, Gala, is a bit special, born on 10th, her sire and dam are both from several generations of our own breeding. The sire's dam is also the dam of the calf pictured below-the one we've named him Governor Grey-which will only be of significance to NZ'rs!

This was our first calf, a heifer born 29th July, now 2 weeks old

Interesting how the data compares/differs between dairy and beef. Do you have to submit rump width and birth weights and stature when you record calves-so these can be assimilated for various sires data?
For registered beef we have to weigh the calf within 24 hours of birth, then at 200 days, 400 days and 600 days of age. Calving ease is noted on the birth registration as unassisted, easy pull, hard pull, or surgical!

We have supplied a couple of Murray Grey bulls for the CRV Ambreed 'dairy beef' semen programme. They had to be below average birthweight EBV's and if possible average or above average weaning (200 day) EBV's, and silver! They get used as the bull of the day when anyone asks for Murray Grey!

 

[regolith]

I'm not quite clear on where the data comes from for the sire proofs - I've been given contradictory information when I've asked, and though I was working in a herd that did sire proving, last year, didn't really learn anything new.
Before genomic infornation was available, young sires were used in sire proving herds to generate around 80 daughters across several different herds, for a fair comparison. They have to be herd tested to record milk volumes &c, and a classifier scores the heifers for TOP (traits other than production). The farmer also scores some traits - temperament, likability. That information gives a proof of around 80% reliability, and the most promising bulls will be marketed widely as soon as their daughter information starts to arrive.
What I'm very unclear on is how the later performance of those daughters, or feedback from farmers following widespread use, is incorporated into the proof and how the much larger number of daughters generated from the use of 'DNA proven' bulls will affect the proofs. With cows recorded in the LIC database there is space to record reasons for culling, calving assistance, health events... one LIC rep told me that information was used, another told me it wasn't.

It's so much easier with the beefies-you just have to check they are getting along alright with the calving and bonding and that the calf is getting fed-then stand back and watch!
Gosh it all sounds so easy put like that!

That's pretty much what I'm doing too, only difference is I'm milking the cow as well, then kidnapping the calf at four or five days old. I'm astonished at all the things they come up with to worry you - cross-suckling, feeding on the first day then apparently forgetting how, cows tripping over calves (I had some unexplained lameness in the calves and that seems the most likely cause), weak calves that take a while to get going, over-attentive mums, sick mums, cows that won't go anywhere without their calf (that's all of them). Calves that chose the most bacteria-laden surface they can find to lie down on.
The main problem I expected with leaving the calves on the cows was exposure to bad weather weakening the Jerseys and smaller crossbreds. It hasn't happened. Also, I worried about calves and cows that don't get things together early enough that the calf gets colostrum - all the research insists dairy calves don't get enough colostrum if it's left up to them and the cow. I'm watching them and, with one or two exceptions, all have managed it.

 

[regolith]

laptop by candle-light in the modern age - and because life ,loves to make a liar of me, the machine beeped just as I hit 'post reply' and in trying to decipher why it did that, I realised the ceiling lights were on.

If I go milk now, I might just about avoid an SCC spike - lets hope the electricity stays on.
I didn't have to teach the cows to graze through snow, they figured it out for themselves. Just about 2 - 3 inches lying, no wind. Break fences don't work in the snow, especially not the tape ones (snow weighs the tape down to the ground) and especially not when the electric's out. So the cows had the whole paddock when I checked them.

 

[regolith]

bobby calves for Waihou: average calf is $1.10/kg carcase and 17 - 20 dollars. One was just under the threshhold, and they've given me $1.78 for it, 20 cents a kilo. Another was 28 kg and made $40, more than I was getting in the saleyards in 2009 for white face calves - but I can't see how that's my calf. I loaded a 50 kg plus Jersey cross onto the trailer and didn't notice it?? I think we've only had a couple of calves born at or over 40kg this season and they're all three in the calf shed, though I haven't got the scales out this year.

Did you get much snow? Melting here already, but the forecast is for more over the next three days or so. I got most of the calves into the shed yesterday, so there's only two newborns out there and probably a third by now.

I've had two calves rejected so far for still having wet navels. One was four days old, the other I'd loaded for the bobby truck accidentally, and was only two days. They don't dry up as fast when they're out in the mud and rain, apparently. I noticed a couple of calves that were fully four days old I put into the shed yesterday, and still wet.

 

[waihou]

No, we didn't get snow settling down here, but I hear Feilding did. We have just had a couple of snowstorms, big fluffy flakes, but hardly wet the ground let alone settle, snow is a novelty for us! Temperature was down to about 1C, but the youngest calf is 3 days old now, so not a worry, while it stays dry.

I was interested as to what the returns for calves were like on the truck. I think the good white face and freisians are fetching good prices at 10 days old in the Rongotea sales. Like well over $100.

I suppose the trade off between using a beefier sire over some of the cows you don't want to keep heifers from is a better price on the bobby truck and less milk to get them over the acceptable weight as that means to get milk in the vat, then I don't suppose another $1 or 2 for the calf is worth the risk of maybe getting bigger calves? But getting upwards of double the price for a 40kg calf might be worth a look?!

 

[regolith]

I've got photos - the USians will just have to bear with us, us North Islanders haven't seen snow before! Have also just spoken to a Taranaki farmer and they had about he same amount of snow but theirs is still lying - I sometimes think South Taranaki is perfectly positioned to get the wind right off Antarctica.

I'm going to bring the three new calves into the shed tonight as well, I think - they're surviving okay, but they look miserable. Taught fifteen calves to drink off the feeders today, and put down the sick one... it looked like she could have lived a long life being tube-fed three times a day and never improving. Still don't know what was wrong with her.

 

[regolith]

The milking herd this morning:

and the springers:

Milk thief the other day:

Dry cows:

 

[waihou]

I agree about the novelty factor-snow is a once in 40 year occaision around here!
We got snow this afternoon as I fed out some hay, it's about 3 inches deep now and still snowing. I hope none calve in the night, at least the cows and calves can all get under cover but the in-calf cows are out in the paddocks.

 

[regolith]

Last AI-sired calf born today - and she's a real cutie. I couldn't wait till evening to find out if it was a heifer or bull, was driving back on the tractor and just had to check.

Still 21 cows to calve. The grass is so short my milk cows are grazing down to around an inch - about 160 milkers and 20some dries on 75 ha! I've just put fertiliser and lime on about half the area, which is the first this farm has seen in around twenty years.

Bad run with the calves this year... I hadn't lost a rearable heifer since 2005, and first I had that sick calf I had to put down, then I found Annie's calf lying dead in the calf shed at four weeks old. The vet said it was clostridia. Bloody typical that it would take the top calf. I still have Annie's grand-daughter, Andrina in the shed, she was born a poor doer and after twice watching her go backwards on the group feeder I put her in a pen all alone and she's been growing great ever since. She's now with another three calves, another poor-looking crossbred that I thought would do better out of the group when I turfed the younger ones outside, and two that I've brought back in from that younger group - I had cull cows out with them for a few days and when they left one of the calves didn't come to the feeder, nor the next day (yesterday) and I figured if she did that once more she was getting on the tractor and coming home. She refused again today, so she got put on the tractor and back in the shed and got a bottle of warm milk which she drank.
Just enough scours to keep me on edge, but none of the calves have been sick because of it. One yesterday with her head hanging down refusing to suck, gave her two feeds of electrolyte by tube and she's back with the group at the feeder this morning, raring to go; and she's the worst I've seen so far.