talltimber, you aren't kidding! We do 1 round of AI to calve around Feb 20th and know we are gambling with Iowa winters doing that then turn the bull out for March 1 calving. This year has been crazy, talked to a guy at the beef expo the other week here and he said he installed a radiant heater in a pen in their barn as they start calving in January and never thought he'd be more worried about the mud than the cold! We had 5 calves between the 17th and 23rd this past week and couldn't have asked for nicer weather as we hit the 70's several days.
On the flip side though the mud claimed a victim as our top first calf heifer we found dead just 5 hours after chore time Wednesday night when we did 10pm checks on the maternity ward. We think she was laying down near the hay feeder where the cows had been tromping around in the mud, tried to get up and got rolled over where she couldn't get her feet under her and bloated up and died from the stress. Seems like whenever you have bad luck it happens to the good ones
