Just curious Calving Strategies

[Caustic Burno]

After years of calving year around I am moving towards a fall calving season as spring calves always bring the most money. Carrying wet cows in the winter has never been a major issue here as mild as ours are its just another roll a hay for them at about a 30 dollar value which the calf more than recoups.
There are more options with fall calfs versus spring.
Changing stategies to help offset increased fuel cost instead of hauling year around just once in the spring.

 

[SPRINGER FARMS MURRAY GRE]

I have a friend (that bought a bull from me by the way) that runs over 100 mama cows.They have a spring and a fall calving season,says that way they have a better cash flow. ;-) :cboy:

 

[cfpinz]

We have a fall group and a spring group. I prefer the fall calvers myself. Have far less trouble with scours, pneumonia, etc in the fall calves. It's nice to have two paychecks, but I've started moving the spring group back to fall.

 

[WORANCH]

Having only one calving season (ours is spring) has worked out great for us .And I believe t he shorter the calving season the better .It has saved on labor and hay cost as dry cows stay in better shape durring the winter .

What you save on labor will off set some of the cost of extra hay you will feed with fall calving.

 

[milkmaid]

On the flip side, Caustic, if you run one (or two) calving seasons, you are only exposing those cows to the bull to give you a 12 month calving interval. Where you're at right now they're running with the bull 24/7 aren't they? so surely you have some running 10 and 11 month calving intervals -- I know we do with the dairy herd. If a cow ran a 10 month C.I., and never missed a calf -- if my math is right, in 5 years you'd have 6 calves from the cow versus 5 calves on a conventional 12 month calving interval. One extra calf.

Besides that -- surely you'd be shipping or not breeding back some good cows to transfer the entire herd to fall calving?

Food for thought anyways; I like to make folks think. ;-)

 

[Aero]

i heard about somebody in New Mexico that has plenty of land and plenty of cows who uses a neat year round calving plan.

apparently, they round all of the calves up 2 or 3 times per year and anything over 500 lbs, heads to the feedlot. he says he gets more than 1 calf per year on average and with the minimal management, they have very little overhead. he puts a bull in a pasture and never rotates him.



it sounds like a bad plan in the beginning, but how many people can say they have more calves than cows every year?

you could have a roundup every 2 or 3 months and have a very uniform calf crop going to the feedlot.

the only down side is that you have to have a large number of cows (500+) and acres for this to work.

 

[ChrisB]

After years of calving in the spring I moved to fall calves for a couple reasons. I have basically eliminated scour problems and therefore saved a lot of labor. I have to haul some cows to different pastures in the summer and it was kind of a pain making sure I had the right calves going with the right cows. I also feed all my calves out and instead of having them on full feed in the hot and humid months, they are on full feed in the better feeding months in the fall.

I feed corn silage so milk production in the cows doesn't seem to be effected.

I liked spring calving and having the calves out on pasture in the summer, but fall just seems to work better for me. The biggest problem I've found is it is harder to find quality replacements at a good price. I am having to keep some of my own heifers back again and calve them out. So that will add back some of the labor I was saving.

 

[mitchwi]

After years of calving in the spring I moved to fall calves for a couple reasons. I have basically eliminated scour problems and therefore saved a lot of labor. I have to haul some cows to different pastures in the summer and it was kind of a pain making sure I had the right calves going with the right cows. I also feed all my calves out and instead of having them on full feed in the hot and humid months, they are on full feed in the better feeding months in the fall.

I feed corn silage so milk production in the cows doesn't seem to be effected.

I liked spring calving and having the calves out on pasture in the summer, but fall just seems to work better for me. The biggest problem I've found is it is harder to find quality replacements at a good price. I am having to keep some of my own heifers back again and calve them out. So that will add back some of the labor I was saving.

What part of MN are you in Chris? I was contemplating the same thing - having fall calves, and I got a lot of negative responses from people in the "north" I also do the same thing as you, feed out my own, and depending on crop quanities, buy additional feeders as needed.

Sorry CB - not intending to hijack you, ChrisB if you want to PM me with further info, I would appreciate it. Michele

 

[dun]

This will probably ramble, maybe even more then usual, but here are my (what passes for) thought process'.
Our reasons for spring calving is so we don;t have to feed hay or supplement over the winter, just stockpiled (very toxic) fescue. Since we've alwasy done 100% AI, the winter temps for breeding have put me off. Having dry cows or those in the tail end of there lactation eating all of that super good spring flush grass seems like a waste of good grits. Night checks on heifers in the snow/ice/cold isn;t something I really like to contemplate. Maybe the biggest reason, the wife enjoys watching the baby calves learning all about their new world and playing in the pasture.
We are contemplating starting fall calving since we have a bull to take care of the inclement weather breeding and it would make better use of his talents. Seems a waste for him to only get any real action for 45 days a year and still eat the other 320.
The twice a year pay day would be nice but would it make up for having to have multiple herds of cows particulalry since we practice MIG. Moving one group every couple of days is a big enough pain in the butt, moving 2 groups with the attnedent installation and removal of temp fencing is something else I'm not real crazy about.
With the slight respite from the drought tha we had last fall and early spring this year we were planning on cutting back and not retaining many heifers. I don;t know how to manage a bunch of heifers to grow them properly to breed at 21 months, at least the first year.
I'm getting tired of learning too much knew stuff every year, lazy I guess, and it seems like I don;t retain it as well anymore either.

dun

 

[mgman]

Mitchwi,
I haven't had alot of fall calves over the years, but the few that I have had didn't tend to gain or do all that well during the winter months. They just seem to be putting most/all their energy into staying warm rather than gaining weight. It also seems to be a bit of a challenge for some cows to maintain their body condition while feeding a calf through the winter.
I guess it would probably help if I supplimented the cows/calves during the winter, but feel like that kind of defeats my goal of raising beef on grass/forage. I tend to agree with some of the very wise folks on here have pointed out the folly of expecting to make a profit by feeding from a sack!! ;-)
Now if I was living farther south where the winter is milder I would probably have a completely different opinion on the subject.
Just my 2 cents...

 

[mitchwi]

Thanks mgman - BTW how did your last 4 calves come out? Heifers I hope :)

 

[Caustic Burno]

On the flip side, Caustic, if you run one (or two) calving seasons, you are only exposing those cows to the bull to give you a 12 month calving interval. Where you're at right now they're running with the bull 24/7 aren't they? so surely you have some running 10 and 11 month calving intervals -- I know we do with the dairy herd. If a cow ran a 10 month C.I., and never missed a calf -- if my math is right, in 5 years you'd have 6 calves from the cow versus 5 calves on a conventional 12 month calving interval. One extra calf.

Besides that -- surely you'd be shipping or not breeding back some good cows to transfer the entire herd to fall calving?

Food for thought anyways; I like to make folks think. ;-)

You are absolutely right and figured I was on a 10 to 11 month cycle. You are right about shipping I have some that need to go anyway, and some new Brangus girls that need to backfill there postion in the employment line. After the Lufkin salebarn closed down and it got to be 90 miles one way to a decent sale in Crockett. I have started rethinking my strategy the diesel cost is the same for carrying a light load vesus the trailer packed.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

i calve in the spring but my biggest concern lately and its a big one. is the lush spring grass blowing their bag out on the heavy milkers

 

[1848]

After years of calving year around I am moving towards a fall calving season as spring calves always bring the most money. Carrying wet cows in the winter has never been a major issue here as mild as ours are its just another roll a hay for them at about a 30 dollar value which the calf more than recoups.
There are more options with fall calfs versus spring.
Changing stategies to help offset increased fuel cost instead of hauling year around just once in the spring.

Caustic there was a good article on the pros on cons associated with spring and fall calving in a Hereford World magazine several months (probably a year) back. It actually had some good data justifying fall calving. I found it interesting, and many of the reasons were some of the same I actually use.

 

[Beefy]

i calve in the spring but my biggest concern lately and its a big one. is the lush spring grass blowing their bag out on the heavy milkers

now thats something that i hadnt even thought of and it makes perfect sense. might explain some of the blind quarters ive had too. duh.

i prefer fall calving anyway. but we have some all year round.

 

[Beefy]

Caustic, did that bigheaded salebarn cow ever have her calf?

 

[Caustic Burno]

Caustic, did that bigheaded salebarn cow ever have her calf?

You never forget anything do you. No she looks like she is a month or so off looking at her. Still waiting I got a 4 year old Brangus that blew a bag out on the 3 rd calf worst case of bell tits I ever seen that is going to get to take a ride this fall, big head might have just gotten saved by fate.

 

[ONLY-BEEF]

Mister Caustic Burno we calve in the fall an the spring. mostly cus we could not handle the number of calves ifen we had em all at once. one thing ta keep in mind is ifen your gonna stop leaven yur bulls out year round ya got ta have yur self a well fenced pasture. Big enough ta hold all yur bulls an far enough away from yur cows so they cant smell em.

 

[Beefy]

Caustic, did that bigheaded salebarn cow ever have her calf?

You never forget anything do you. No she looks like she is a month or so off looking at her. Still waiting I got a 4 year old Brangus that blew a bag out on the 3 rd calf worst case of bell tits I ever seen that is going to get to take a ride this fall, big head might have just gotten saved by fate.

Somebody once told me that forgetting was a bad habit to start and worse to break.

 

[ChrisB]

Michele,

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.

I am located in the east central part of the state.

Our scale quit working so I haven't weighed our calves since switching to fall calves a few years ago, but I do think they may be a bit lighter than the spring calves. I have had good success limit-creeping the calves and I think those calves were actually bigger than my spring calves but it was too labor intensive. I am planning on trying Purina Acclimator, but am not real sure how it will work since the cost is pretty high. But I like to creep at least little bit just to aid in weaning.

I calve in September and October and wean in early May. ideally I would like to wean them sooner but May works good labor wise and it usually isn't as wet as April so it works I guess. I feed them roughly 1% body weight until July and slowly ramp them to full feed by August. They still eat a lot in August despite the heat and from September thru November they really seem to grow best. Then they will start finishing the end of January. This is just on a whole shelled corn diet along with alfalfa/grass hay. If you feed a TMR you would get better gains an could probably finish them a bit sooner.

Hope this helps,
Chris[/quote]