Late May - June Calving and Grass Fed Operation

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Guys,

Couple of questions for you. First, if castrate at birth, what is the best way to catch a calf when it is born and deal with the mother while band him and tag?

And the other question, about pastures...here is my situation, my fields been cut for hay for years, just cut and haul away...so I only manage to get about 2 T/hectare of hay...sold some, and feeding the rest on the fields, but when I tilled the area for the garden, I saw some crazy grass growth at least 5-6 times the amount of grass, and that make me think about doing some "soil puncture" of all the areas I will be able to this spring and maybe adding some seeds as well. What are some of the best working solutions that will improve the grass without full blown tilling and planting etc?
 
Guys,

Couple of questions for you. First, if castrate at birth, what is the best way to catch a calf when it is born and deal with the mother while band him and tag?

And the other question, about pastures...here is my situation, my fields been cut for hay for years, just cut and haul away...so I only manage to get about 2 T/hectare of hay...sold some, and feeding the rest on the fields, but when I tilled the area for the garden, I saw some crazy grass growth at least 5-6 times the amount of grass, and that make me think about doing some "soil puncture" of all the areas I will be able to this spring and maybe adding some seeds as well. What are some of the best working solutions that will improve the grass without full blown tilling and planting etc?

The best way to catch the calf and deal with the mother depends on the facilities and the individual cows. I work at a large cow/calf operation and there we bring each pair to the barn and put them in a stall together for about the first day. It makes it easy to process the calf after because you can just kick tbe mother cow out of the stall and do what you need to. Of course that requires a big barn with lots of pens and lots of labor to watch and bring in all the new calves.

At home with my own cows we let them calve in a pen where we keep all the cows close to calving and after a few days we catch the calves and process them. Over the years I've added pens off the main pen to put pairs that need to be alone or where we can help cows that need help calving. There's pens in a few areas of the pen so it's easy to open a gate and lock a calf in, or grab a sleeping calf by the leg and drag it into the closest pen away from its mother and safely process it. Some of my cows can be trusted while I do it right in the main pen but I still put the calves in a pen to process them to be safe.

There's all kinds of ways of catching calves. I've seen contraptions that are like cages or bale rings you can place over the calf with a tractor loader or mount on an atv. I'm sure lots of folks just go out with two people and have one guard while the other works on the calf.

Your fields will get better if you keep feeding on them but it will be very concentrated in the areas where the bales were fed. Some like to harrow the residue and spread that out a little. My favorite way to improve land without really working it is to spray out the grass and direct drill grain one year, then cover crops and finally just broadcast grass and legume seeds and harrow it on the third year.
 
The best way to catch the calf and deal with the mother depends on the facilities and the individual cows. I work at a large cow/calf operation and there we bring each pair to the barn and put them in a stall together for about the first day. It makes it easy to process the calf after because you can just kick tbe mother cow out of the stall and do what you need to. Of course that requires a big barn with lots of pens and lots of labor to watch and bring in all the new calves.

At home with my own cows we let them calve in a pen where we keep all the cows close to calving and after a few days we catch the calves and process them. Over the years I've added pens off the main pen to put pairs that need to be alone or where we can help cows that need help calving. There's pens in a few areas of the pen so it's easy to open a gate and lock a calf in, or grab a sleeping calf by the leg and drag it into the closest pen away from its mother and safely process it. Some of my cows can be trusted while I do it right in the main pen but I still put the calves in a pen to process them to be safe.

There's all kinds of ways of catching calves. I've seen contraptions that are like cages or bale rings you can place over the calf with a tractor loader or mount on an atv. I'm sure lots of folks just go out with two people and have one guard while the other works on the calf.

Your fields will get better if you keep feeding on them but it will be very concentrated in the areas where the bales were fed. Some like to harrow the residue and spread that out a little. My favorite way to improve land without really working it is to spray out the grass and direct drill grain one year, then cover crops and finally just broadcast grass and legume seeds and harrow it on the third year.
Rydero thanks for your input,

For now there isn't any barns that I have available for me, I am thinking the same way, 2 people one working on the calve the other one guarding from the cow.

And thanks for the information on the pastures improvement, I will try few things this year and will keep posting the work and results.
 
Sounds like a subsoiling plow might be usefull for your soil. This is the type that I use.

When dealing with the calf make sure dogs are well away. A nice bit of hazy or bucket of grain may distract the cow until the calf bellows.
If you keep taking hay off remember you are going to have to add nutrients back.

Ken
 
Sounds like a subsoiling plow might be usefull for your soil. This is the type that I use.

When dealing with the calf make sure dogs are well away. A nice bit of hazy or bucket of grain may distract the cow until the calf bellows.
If you keep taking hay off remember you are going to have to add nutrients back.

Ken

Ken,

No more taking the hay off the farm...it all stays there, I will make a supply I hope, but everything is going to stay on the property.
 
Hi farmerjan,

This year I have 36 heifers. I never preg check them. But they been with the bulls since August 20 or so. I saw the bulls tried to mount 1 or 2 cows as late as yearly October, so I am not sure if they were in heat or not. We will see. As you can see not many heifers, but the plan is to maybe get some more this year, we will see. Also, with stockers we got two heifers that were bred earlier and we got the first calf about 2 weeks ago, she was lucky I think, was born during the day, and it was somewhat warm...about 0 C, and sunny...so she had a chance to dry up...and the other one calved yesterday, again lucky:) 6 C and sunny, and also born during the day, but we still have -10 at night, and any day can have wind snow and all the way to -20 C, so I just think of it as a lottery...plus with hay only I am sure cows do not get enough for them to be in optimal shape.
However, I will monitor closely this year and see if maybe there is room to move calving up 2 weeks or so.
Now you need four groups... a place to put your bulls so you don't end up with off season calves.....
 
Sounds like you will be calving on pasture. So basically you make the rounds each morning, and snag the new calf with a Shepard's crook. No fuss, no pens. You will want to do this the first day or two. If I don't find the calf early, then I usually snag them while the herd is going thru a gate to the next paddock.

Banding big bull calves can be a challenge for one person. If you have help - - one holds the hind legs of an upside down bull calf and the other does the banding.

There are lots of mad cow stories about not being able to work new calves. I have never seen that with a home raised heifer. I have had a few man eaters with purchased cows, but that kind never have a second calf in my pastures.

Simplest way to increase pasture fertility is to increase grazing density. Buy some poly wire and move your cows every day or two.
 
We use quads and check cows every 2 to 3 hours for six weeks or more. I tag, band give a Toltrazuril capsule and intraday nasal vaccinate with Inforce 3 and PMH Once. We feed minerals so don't believe a vitamin shot does much good unless we get an actual white muscle calf. Our cows respect the quads and I don't get far from it after I have caught a calf with my hook. Most will let you tag their calf although they will complain a bit. Make sure you count to two after you remove the ring pliers!
 
Guys,

Couple of questions for you. First, if castrate at birth, what is the best way to catch a calf when it is born and deal with the mother while band him and tag?

And the other question, about pastures...here is my situation, my fields been cut for hay for years, just cut and haul away...so I only manage to get about 2 T/hectare of hay...sold some, and feeding the rest on the fields, but when I tilled the area for the garden, I saw some crazy grass growth at least 5-6 times the amount of grass, and that make me think about doing some "soil puncture" of all the areas I will be able to this spring and maybe adding some seeds as well. What are some of the best working solutions that will improve the grass without full blown tilling and planting etc?

Breed and Cull for disposition and use bulls accordingly.

If a cow has to be brought into a pen or barn to calve she is culled, period. First and foremost a cow has to be a cow. It's her job to have a calf unassisted, feed her calf, protect her calf, and wean a nice calf while maintaining and then regaining her body condition quickly. If she can't do any of the above? She's gone. I'm not there to do her job for her. Seems like too many Ranchers these days are intent to try and be better cows than the ones they have 🤦‍♂️

I check for new calves in the morning and in the late afternoon. I go out, toss a lead rope around their neck, sit on them, band, give shots, and tag them. Takes about 2 minutes per calf. Occasionally I'll have to rope one but that's rare. I can't imagine bringing them up to pens and a barn and running them through like that...I'd never get anything else done. There's an entire industry built on making stupid management decisions "work."

Running cows can be one of the easiest things you ever do...or the hardest. Most of it depends on you and your management. A person could easily run 100+ cows, work full time on top, not lose a calf, breed back 99% or better each year, get a premium for their herd and have time for their family on the weekends and never have an ounce of stress about calving season...it's really dependent on you.
 
Breed and Cull for disposition and use bulls accordingly.

If a cow has to be brought into a pen or barn to calve she is culled, period. First and foremost a cow has to be a cow. It's her job to have a calf unassisted, feed her calf, protect her calf, and wean a nice calf while maintaining and then regaining her body condition quickly. If she can't do any of the above? She's gone. I'm not there to do her job for her. Seems like too many Ranchers these days are intent to try and be better cows than the ones they have 🤦‍♂️

I check for new calves in the morning and in the late afternoon. I go out, toss a lead rope around their neck, sit on them, band, give shots, and tag them. Takes about 2 minutes per calf. Occasionally I'll have to rope one but that's rare. I can't imagine bringing them up to pens and a barn and running them through like that...I'd never get anything else done. There's an entire industry built on making stupid management decisions "work."

Running cows can be one of the easiest things you ever do...or the hardest. Most of it depends on you and your management. A person could easily run 100+ cows, work full time on top, not lose a calf, breed back 99% or better each year, get a premium for their herd and have time for their family on the weekends and never have an ounce of stress about calving season...it's really dependent on you.
Jafruech, great words:)

My goal is to make it the easiest...and last few days I have learned a lot from folks here on this board.
 
We use quads and check cows every 2 to 3 hours for six weeks or more. I tag, band give a Toltrazuril capsule and intraday nasal vaccinate with Inforce 3 and PMH Once. We feed minerals so don't believe a vitamin shot does much good unless we get an actual white muscle calf. Our cows respect the quads and I don't get far from it after I have caught a calf with my hook. Most will let you tag their calf although they will complain a bit. Make sure you count to two after you remove the ring pliers!

Why do you check them so often?
 
Breed and Cull for disposition and use bulls accordingly.

If a cow has to be brought into a pen or barn to calve she is culled, period. First and foremost a cow has to be a cow. It's her job to have a calf unassisted, feed her calf, protect her calf, and wean a nice calf while maintaining and then regaining her body condition quickly. If she can't do any of the above? She's gone. I'm not there to do her job for her. Seems like too many Ranchers these days are intent to try and be better cows than the ones they have 🤦‍♂️

I check for new calves in the morning and in the late afternoon. I go out, toss a lead rope around their neck, sit on them, band, give shots, and tag them. Takes about 2 minutes per calf. Occasionally I'll have to rope one but that's rare. I can't imagine bringing them up to pens and a barn and running them through like that...I'd never get anything else done. There's an entire industry built on making stupid management decisions "work."

Running cows can be one of the easiest things you ever do...or the hardest. Most of it depends on you and your management. A person could easily run 100+ cows, work full time on top, not lose a calf, breed back 99% or better each year, get a premium for their herd and have time for their family on the weekends and never have an ounce of stress about calving season...it's really dependent on you.
Sign me up! You're running 100+ cows with zero losses, premium price for your calves and 99% breed back rate? That's amazing. Why even work out? Just run another 100. You've got me thinking. If I can get that working for me, I've definitely been doing it wrong to this point.
 
Jafruech, great words:)

My goal is to make it the easiest...and last few days I have learned a lot from folks here on this board.
Reading through some of the posts. A few things come to my attention; 1)the longer you leave the calf on the cow, the harder it is on the cow 2) steers and heifers need less protein than bulls 3) some people are making a lot of extra work during calving season 4) just grazing calves on grass until they are 24 months will have pretty mixed results in different places (supplement your calves if they are gaining under 1.5 lbs per day, as a general rule they are being stunted if they gain under that threshold)
 
Why do you check them so often?
We can get 30 per day and dead calves don't sell well. Conditions here aren't the best even in April, we can have mud one day and -20F the next day. 170 heifers to calve this year. Cattle are our only income so we best do our job hey?
 
Sign me up! You're running 100+ cows with zero losses, premium price for your calves and 99% breed back rate? That's amazing. Why even work out? Just run another 100. You've got me thinking. If I can get that working for me, I've definitely been doing it wrong to this point.
I'm working on it. Need the grass for them first. Working on getting more ground. I had planned to keep more back last year. The drought had other plans. Strongly leaning towards just getting more lease ground (got several bids in), building up the herd more then moving somewhere with better rainfall in a few years.

The foreign and out of state investors are gobbling sections up sight unseen and jacking up the land prices. Then the developers are buying up the larger spreads to make more subdivisions. I'm worried about the water as the population grows too. Lots of wells are already having to be redrilled.There's plenty of places in the country where I could run 30x (or more) the cattle on the same acreage for a similar cost of land to what I have now. I'm slowly trying to get my wife to warm up to the idea. We'll see.

Personal opinion: people concentrate on the wrong genetics and end up getting less of what they want by focusing on specific traits and neglecting a holistic view of how that effects the animal overall.

Management and how you market has just as much to do with your profitability. The nicest angus steer out there doesn't do you much good if you don't sell him right. Case in point: A friend of mine has a few hundred head of LHs. I was helping him measure horns earlier this morning. He direct markets grass fed LH beef to consumers locally and gets a premium for it. Every time I see someone asking for a recommendation on one of the Facebook groups there's at least 100 people that tag and recommend his beef....and these are pure LHs we are talking about... year after year for 30 plus years he sells out with buyers the keep coming back.

Another friend runs 2000+ head of corriente X yearlings and about 900 head of angus x corriente cows. He used to run all angus and made the switch about 20 years ago and never looked back.

There's a million ways to be more profitable and create less work for yourself. Most of it comes down to management and marketing and being flexible. I try to sell private treaty and have repeat buyers on that side. Sometimes I have to take them to the sale barn and I make sure I've done the things that will have the most value added for the least cost and I do really well at the sale barn too.

My grass fed buyers tell me how great my calves do and finish on grass. My guys that finish on grain tell me how great the marbling and taste is. My feedlot buyer is really happy with health and performance. You can have cattle that will do it all, and cows with excellent longevity, fertility, easy fleshing, and wean great calves...it's all in your management. People tend to swing to extremes and concentrate on the wrong things. Idk. I grew up doing things the traditional way... Ranching the hard way as I like to call it. My family has been farming and Ranching for 8+ generations (before they even came to the US)....my dad and grandpa questioned a lot of my choices and direction initially....now they both tell me they wished they had known how easy running cows could be. Idk. I learn from everyone I can then take what I have learned and apply what I can for my Operation where I can. I think being open to everything is important to stay profitable. Sorry for rambling on.
 
We can get 30 per day and dead calves don't sell well. Conditions here aren't the best even in April, we can have mud one day and -20F the next day. 170 heifers to calve this year. Cattle are our only income so we best do our job hey?
Have you tried Ebay Dave? My neighbour is a bit of a hunter/taxidermist and if an animal he kills is pregnant he puts the foetus in a bottle with some spirits and puts them on ebay. Pig in a bottle at $80 is not bad when you get 8 or so in a litter. Some crazy sadistic buyers out there.

Ken
 
Have you tried Ebay Dave? My neighbour is a bit of a hunter/taxidermist and if an animal he kills is pregnant he puts the foetus in a bottle with some spirits and puts them on ebay. Pig in a bottle at $80 is not bad when you get 8 or so in a litter. Some crazy sadistic buyers out there.

Ken
Aren't you the humorist! Will have to find a large jar and see if there is a buyer hey?
 
Sign me up! You're running 100+ cows with zero losses, premium price for your calves and 99% breed back rate? That's amazing. Why even work out? Just run another 100. You've got me thinking. If I can get that working for me, I've definitely been doing it wrong to this point.
I smell a bit of bs in this.
Not your post either.
 
I'm working on it. Need the grass for them first. Working on getting more ground. I had planned to keep more back last year. The drought had other plans. Strongly leaning towards just getting more lease ground (got several bids in), building up the herd more then moving somewhere with better rainfall in a few years.

The foreign and out of state investors are gobbling sections up sight unseen and jacking up the land prices. Then the developers are buying up the larger spreads to make more subdivisions. I'm worried about the water as the population grows too. Lots of wells are already having to be redrilled.There's plenty of places in the country where I could run 30x (or more) the cattle on the same acreage for a similar cost of land to what I have now. I'm slowly trying to get my wife to warm up to the idea. We'll see.

Personal opinion: people concentrate on the wrong genetics and end up getting less of what they want by focusing on specific traits and neglecting a holistic view of how that effects the animal overall.

Management and how you market has just as much to do with your profitability. The nicest angus steer out there doesn't do you much good if you don't sell him right. Case in point: A friend of mine has a few hundred head of LHs. I was helping him measure horns earlier this morning. He direct markets grass fed LH beef to consumers locally and gets a premium for it. Every time I see someone asking for a recommendation on one of the Facebook groups there's at least 100 people that tag and recommend his beef....and these are pure LHs we are talking about... year after year for 30 plus years he sells out with buyers the keep coming back.

Another friend runs 2000+ head of corriente X yearlings and about 900 head of angus x corriente cows. He used to run all angus and made the switch about 20 years ago and never looked back.

There's a million ways to be more profitable and create less work for yourself. Most of it comes down to management and marketing and being flexible. I try to sell private treaty and have repeat buyers on that side. Sometimes I have to take them to the sale barn and I make sure I've done the things that will have the most value added for the least cost and I do really well at the sale barn too.

My grass fed buyers tell me how great my calves do and finish on grass. My guys that finish on grain tell me how great the marbling and taste is. My feedlot buyer is really happy with health and performance. You can have cattle that will do it all, and cows with excellent longevity, fertility, easy fleshing, and wean great calves...it's all in your management. People tend to swing to extremes and concentrate on the wrong things. Idk. I grew up doing things the traditional way... Ranching the hard way as I like to call it. My family has been farming and Ranching for 8+ generations (before they even came to the US)....my dad and grandpa questioned a lot of my choices and direction initially....now they both tell me they wished they had known how easy running cows could be. Idk. I learn from everyone I can then take what I have learned and apply what I can for my Operation where I can. I think being open to everything is important to stay profitable. Sorry for rambling on.
Curious, what genetics are you having success with?
 
I smell a bit of bs in this.
Not your post either.
The closer "working on it" is to 100+ the more questions I have and intent listening I'll do. Extra points if land, facilities, cattle and equipment had to be purchased at market value first hand too.
50 is very different than 20, 100 is different than 50 and 500 is different than 100 etc. Of the 8 calves I dragged in last night I had to back 2 extra cows off 2 of them. How does that get sorted out if I'm not around? How often do twins work out with no help and containment? I've seen wonderful mother cows follow one twin halfway across a pen and leave another laying there because they can't count very good - not their fault imo (we have 10 successful sets on the go right now).

Not much of what I do as a cattleman is written in stone so if there's a better way I become aware of I'll be sure to steal it. That's how I got to where I am. Looked at the few guys I know who make a living off cattle and adopted a lot of what they do. I didn't inherit any facilities so I calve a little later. I work for the 2nd largest cow/calf operation around here pretty much full time and do odd mechanical jobs for the largest so I see how things are being done. None of the big guys here run horned cattle or direct market much more than about 10 or 20 animals a year - I can't imagine trying to deal with 1000-2000 people a year trying to sell of 500+ animals by the 1/2 or 1/4. It was bad enough selling 60 pigs I raised a couple years ago.

I'm all ears though. The model is horned cattle, calving May/June, weaning and finishing calves for direct marketing? How do I get to zero dystocia?
 

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