Happy Mother’s Day! We had a very busy Mother’s Day weekend on the farm. We had five calves born over the weekend and seven calves born in total over our second week of calving.
Observations from THE PASTURE: Week 2 of the 2019 Calving Season.
Week of Monday, May 6th – Sunday, May 12th
Monday, May 6th – After our streak broke on Sunday, I was pleased to see a new baby calf today! Calf #7! I discovered him/her during my first check of the morning.
Calf #7!
Feeding time
Calf #7 snoozing!
Tuesday, May 7th – No activity during the first check of the morning. After putting my son down for a nap, I went for another check and discovered…..baby #8! This calf had probably been born in the last 45 minutes. A mini-me of his/her mother!
Calf #8. Mini-me of his/her mother!
Sweet, white-faced baby calf.
I stand!
Wednesday, May 8 – Friday, May 10 – No activity during these days. Just lots of babies running around, play-fighting and exercising. Some trouble making, too, for the calves. haha! Lots of napping for the babies and the still-pregnant cows!
Saturday, May 11th – Boy, oh, boy…today sure made up for the last few days! Three babies born today!
The first check of the morning was calm, no new babies. The next check was the complete opposite! I discovered calf #9 and a cow in labor with calf #10!
Calf #9
Calf #9, enjoying the sunshine.
After checking on calf #9 and mama, I went back to see how the cow in labor was doing. Her water had already broke. I kept my distance at this point, used the zoom feature on my camera and let nature take it’s course. Here are some pictures:
Water has broke and two front legs are presenting themselves perfectly.
She pushed for less than 60 seconds and baby was out!
Welcome to the world, calf #10!
Seconds away from taking that first stand!
A rainstorm was just starting, but I was able to snap a picture of baby going to nurse for the first time.
I always feel so honored and blessed to be able to witness a birth. This was my first one of this season. I have seen many babies born, and I have given birth to two of my own. I am still, though, always in awe of what these creatures do. There are simply no words to describe it. I always count my blessings that I have been able witness such miracles on the farm.
I was already in bed Saturday night when Jer discovered calf #11! Wow! What a day!!
Calf #11, taken the day after being born.
Sunday, May 12th – Mother’s Day! – Today did not disappoint! I had a wonderful day with my three men, and we welcomed two new calves on the farm.
After being served breakfast in bed and drinking my coffee, I went out to check the herd. I always enjoy checking the herd, especially this time of year, but the first check of the morning is always fun seeing if anyone was born since the previous evening. I entered the back pasture, and I immediately could see what looked like a new baby in the distance. Sure enough, we had calf #12!
Calf #12
I continued on with checking the herd. The herd was spread out quite a bit, and as came up on the last group, I noticed a calf that looked mighty new-looking! He/she was curled up, sleeping, with a cow grazing nearby with a bunch of discharge hanging out. Hello, calf #13! I call that a GOOD Mother’s Day morning! 🙂
Well, hello there, baby! Calf #13
Mama and calf #13
Week 2 of calving sure ended with a bang! So far, calving has been uneventful (in a good way!), and we have not had to pull or assist with any births. Just the way we like it. Letting mother nature and the natural instincts of the animals take the lead. 13 calves so far. We are excited to see what week three brings for us here on the farm.
The 2019 Calving Season is officially underway here on the farm. As I discussed in a previous post, I will be doing a series called “Observations from THE PASTURE”, throughout the calving season. Simply put, I will be documenting (with text and pictures) the adventures of the past week on the farm in terms of calving and related activities.
Without further ado, I present Observations from THE PASTURE: Week 1 of the 2019 Calving Season.
Week of Monday, April 29th – Sunday, May 5th
Monday, April 29th – Calm before the storm! Several ladies looked VERY ready to close the chapter on their pregnancies today. No babies, yet!
Tuesday, April 30th – Calving has started! After putting our oldest son on the bus, I went to check the herd, just like I do every morning. As I opened the gate and walked into the back pasture, I immediately knew that we had a new member of the herd. I saw a mama cow (away from the rest of the herd, towards the back of the field) with a BABY CALF! Yippee!!! Jer was on the road that morning, headed for some work training. Not wanting him to miss the moment, I whipped out my phone and told my youngest son that we needed to call daddy! Jer was happy to hear the news, and I was sure to text lots of pictures of our new baby!
and baby is already keeping mama on her hooves! Calf #1
It was very special to share this moment with my son. He was so excited to see the baby. Last year, he was only 2 years old and not as “aware” of the farm activities as he is today. Nothing gets past him. He is 3 going on 30!
Good job, mama. Calf #1
After seeing no other activity, we headed back to the house to have some breakfast.
The two of us headed back out for another check before lunchtime/naptime. As we made our way across the pasture, I stopped to snap a few pictures of one of the cows. After taking a few pictures, we resumed our walk and lo and behold we nearly stumbled into a brand-spanking-new baby calf!
Calf #2 – JUST born!
This calf had JUST been born. We missed the birth by mere seconds. My son was AMAZED! What an adventure for him.
Clean, Clean, Clean
We stepped back and gave the mama and baby some much needed privacy. I was able to capture those first moments after birth. (Please note that all of my pictures are taken using the zoom feature. I am not actually that close!)
Calf #2 standing for the first time!
It doesn’t matter how many times you have seen it before – there is nothing quite so special as watching a baby calf gather up those long legs, push up and STAND, and then take those first wobbly steps. Usually within 20-30 minutes of being born, our newborn baby calves are already walking like experts and taking in their first nursing session (getting in those critical antibodies from their mother’s colostrum).
Calf #2 heading in for the first nursing session.
While doing the last check of the evening, I noticed that one of our older mama cows was extremely moody. She was picking fights and packing a very, very large udder. I told Jer that I was predicting she would calve the next day.
Mama and her mini-me (calf #2) enjoying the sunshine!
Wednesday, May 1st
Jer did all of the checks today. I wasn’t feeling so well and went to the doctors. As I was driving to the doctors in the morning, though, Jer and our son discovered baby calf #3!
Calf #3 – Taken the day after being born
This calf’s mama is the same cow that was picking fights the night before!
Calf #3 – Taken the day after being born
Jer continued with checks throughout the day and while many ladies looked very close, no other babies were born.
Thursday, May 2nd
Thursday found me back to the grind. While my body would have loved another rest day, Jer had to get to work and those mamas needed checking on.
Well, I had a very sweet discovery during the morning check. One of our 1st-calf heifers (we have four this year) had had a baby sometime in the last hour or two. Calf #4!
Good job, mama! Baby #4
It is always a big relief for a 1st-calf heifer to labor and deliver with ease. With it being their first delivery, sometimes these 1st-time mamas need a little assistance from us, and we have helped pull calves from a couple through the years.
Big stretch! Baby #4
Friday, May 3rd
This day found me a year older – hello to being 34 years young! The day did not disappoint. Despite still being sick, I had a great birthday with my three men. They sang me Happy Birthday in the morning and proudly presented me with a homemade birthday card, complete with army men figure drawings. I was also presented with some very special items built from legos. 🙂
The farm did not disappoint either, and I discovered a birthday buddy that afternoon! I figure that this calf, calf #5, was born while I was walking across the field. Unlike the four previous calves, this little one had a little difficulty getting going.
In the end, I had to help prompt, stimulate, and literally stand the calf up (the mother helped out as well, with lots of licking and encouragement). I want to note that normally we do not interfere in the post-birth bonding process AT ALL. If we have been fortunate enough to witness the delivery or shown up shortly after, before the calf has even stood, we are always careful to give plenty of space and to just observe nature take it’s course. I do like to capture the moment on my camera, using the zoom feature. Most of the time, the calf stands up, walks, starts nursing and all is well. In this instance, the calf was not making any efforts to stand, despite all of the mother’s attempts. Mama cow kept licking and the calf would lift it’s head but then lay it back down.
Mama encouraging baby (calf #5) to stand-up. The calf would drop it’s head down, lay on it’s side and close it’s eyes after a few seconds. Mama would then try again.
After watching for several minutes, I decided to step-in and give my birthday buddy some assistance. It took me several tries of literally lifting the calf up and stretching out it’s legs, but my birthday buddy eventually figured it out!
Good job, birthday baby!! Calf #5 finally taking that first stand!
I left them on a high note, with baby taking in it’s first nursing.
Calf #5 – my birthday buddy – started nursing right after I took this photo
I call that a pretty good birthday gift!
Saturday, May 4th
By Saturday, we had had a calf born each day, with two born the first day of the calving season! Would today follow suit or would calving take a pause for the day?
Baby #6! So sweet.
Well, the party kept on coming….Hello, Baby #6! Discovering this baby was just as exciting as finding Baby #1!
Baby #6 posing for the camera.
Keep ’em coming ladies!
Sunday, May 5th
Well, the streak had to end at some point! No babies born today. The weather today was phenomenal and humans and cattle alike thoroughly enjoyed it!
A few notes..
This is still just as exciting as it was 5 years ago, when we were anxiously awaiting the birth of our first calf. The anticipation, the thrill, the joy and the satisfaction of a live, healthy calf…. it never gets old, and I pray it always stays that way
Be sure to keep up with proper nutrition. For us, that means making sure we keep providing our mineral supplements. This is a very physically demanding time right now, especially for our 1st-calf heifers. Our cows are having babies, nursing those babies, AND gearing their bodies up to be re-bred in a couple of months. Since our soils are very depleted in important minerals such as selenium and copper, it is up to us to make sure our animals do not develop any deficiencies that could impact their development and reproductive abilities.
Speaking of re-breeding, keep in mind your breeding season timeline. For us, we do not keep our bull in with the mama cows during the calving season. He will get re-introduced to the ladies in late-July, when we start another breeding season. We do this for two reasons: 1) We do not want any breeding to happen until we WANT it to happen!, and 2) We don’t like having the bull in with the herd while the babies are being born. No need to take any chances with any babies potentially getting injured. Our bull has a very mild disposition, but he is still a bull and a very big (2000 lb) boy.
These last few weeks have found me getting more and more exited for our 6th calving season, and for ALL of this snow to disappear.
Ready for green pastures!
With calving on the mind, I have been tossing around an idea for a future blog series. Seeing the attention our post, That Cow is Gonna Calve Soon: Signs of the Onset of Labor, has garnered since it’s inception in 2014, I had a light-bulb kind of moment. After almost five years from writing that post, I feel that it is long over-due for us to start providing more detailed documentation on Cattle Starter of our observations of the entire beef calving experience, from start to finish.
Therefore, I want to develop a series titled “Observations from THE PASTURE” , where I would share my observations, pictures, and other tidbits of information on a weekly basis, in addition to other Cattle Starter posts. My plan would be to provide a weekly update, starting the end of April/beginning of May and continuing until the calving season ends. We anticipate calves to start hitting the ground around the 1st or 2nd week of May.
As we have mentioned in previous posts, our routine during the calving season involves a good amount of observing and note-taking. Of course, we are obviously already noticing changes in our cows’ bodies, especially their udders. But, as we approach that first week of May, we will be on heightened alert, so to speak, for signs of the onset of labor! At that time, I hope to be able to share my observations and pictures that I have accumulated each week from my field notes. I also hope to be able to provide pictures, showing that progression towards labor. Progression with the udder, the teats and the vulva region. I think it would be valuable to be able to show more pictures of what a cow looks like in those areas only a day or two before she delivers. I feel that these sort of observations, provided on a weekly basis, would take That Cow is Gonna Calve Soon: Signs of the Onset of Labor. to the next level and help to break-down those signs even more for our readers.
Vulva extremely loose and enlarged/swollen. This heifer had her calf three days after this picture was taken.
A picture really is worth a thousand words. As I mentioned in my last post, I am a visual learner, and pictures are such an important tool in our toolbox.
I may very likely continue with the theme of “Observations from THE PASTURE” in discussing other “seasons” and important information related to the farm throughout the year. One such season that would work well for this sort of series would be during the BREEDING SEASON, which will likely start around the 3rd or 4th week of July when we introduce Nebula, our Red Angus bull, into the cow herd. He is currently overwintering with all of our pregnant cows but he will make his exit prior to the start of the calving season. He will go join-up with the boys’ club (i.e., yearling steers and bulls) in another pasture. During the breeding season, we do dedicated, daily observation sessions in the AM and PM. These sessions give us an opportunity to take note of any cycling and/or breeding behavior. I believe that these sessions would have the potential to provide some useful information for a blog series centered around the beef cattle breeding season.
Be sure to check back in late-April/early-May and follow along with us on another calving season adventure as we debut our new blog series”Observations from THE PASTURE“!
Apparently, it is springtime now. It sure doesn’t feel that way on the farm.
1st day of Spring 2019!
For us, spring doesn’t really emerge until April or May. But, spring will arrive to our neck of the woods soon enough and with it, preparation for our 2019 calving season. We pushed back our breeding season last summer by one week and therefore, we anticipate calves to start hitting the ground around the 2nd week of May or so. Calving times vary by regions and individual operations, and we realize that many producers are already in the midst of their calving seasons.
Today’s post highlights two previous posts, related to the calving season.
This post breaks-down what we consider to be our “must-have” items for your calving bucket. As with all things, be sure to tailor your calving bucket for your specific needs.
Make sure your calving bucket is cleaned-up, re-stocked and ready to roll well before your calving season starts. It is no fun and very stressful to be scrambling at the last minute, trying to locate items, while you have a newborn calf in the field ready to be worked. For us, we only have a short period of time to be able to catch that calf before they are able to out-run us.
For a calf born in the morning, we better have worked it by the end of that day or else we won’t be catching it! With that being said, though, we always allow the mother and newborn calf to develop a bond and to nurse to their hearts content before we work the calf.
This calf is standing for the very first time and by nightfall, he probably will already be too quick for us to catch.
This post has been our most popular post in the history of our site. We still find it to be very relevant and informative for those seeking information on what to be watching for as their cow approaches calving time. The signs of the onset of labor in cows that we see today are probably just the same as they were from the beginning of time.
I am a very big visual learner, and when I was outlining the content for this post, I wanted to make sure that it was descriptive, both with text and visual aids. There is incredible value in providing a detailed write-up for folks on this topic. Just a quick search on the internet proves that. By adding descriptive visual aids (i.e., pictures) the reader is able to take that text description to the next level and hopefully, apply it to real-life situations.
I say this a lot in my posts and I will say it again here, spend time watching and getting to know your animals. The more in-tune you are with your animals, their mannerisms, their behaviors, the herd dynamic, the more advantage you will have in detecting the signs preceding labor. That has been my experience these last six years. I can walk out to the cows and scan the herd and get a pretty good idea if someone is in the early stages of labor. By that, I mean if they are going to deliver a calf that very day. Some signs are more obvious than others (water sac has emerged or a cow is bedded down, pushing! ha!). It may be a very slight lift in the tail (right before the water sac is pushed out, that tail will be lifted HIGH and usually bent to the side and there will be NOTHING subtle about it by that point in labor) or a shift in personality that you are only going to recognize if you know your cows and their normal dispositions and behaviors. I have had times where during the 1st check of the morning I have noticed that a particular cow was holding her tailed ever so slightly lifted. You have to really pay attention to notice it. By my next check, a few hours later, that cow is usually in labor or already delivered her calf.
Time really does fly right on by. It has been almost four years since I last wrote about growing up a beef farm.
Our oldest son was only 2 at that time and now he is the most awesome 6 year-old kindergartner! I was pregnant with our youngest and he is a very busy, very energetic, very happy 3 year-old. Jer and I enjoy including the boys and immersing them into the farm life. One nice benefit of daylight savings time is that I can hold off on my afternoon chores until my son gets off the school bus and then, both boys can tag along while I do my chores. They love to help me out and they use their little muscles to do their very best to make things move! The snow is really a great babysitter. At each of our stops along our route, they are either skating across the ice, jumping/sliding down giant mountains of snow, or wrestling each other.
Our afternoon chore-time route includes 4 major stops during the wintertime.
Stop 1 takes us to the feed shed behind the house to fill up on trace minerals for the calves and the mama cows.
After that, we are onward to the back pastures for….
Stop 4 where I feed out more mineral, and adjust more wires on the hay bales for our mama cows.
Most of the time, if the crust is strong enough, I will pull the boys back to the house in the sled. I am always looking to incorporate some more exercise! On this particular day, my oldest decided to help out, and he pulled his little brother part of the way home.
Heading for home for a well-deserved snack!
Jer and I both feel strongly that this is a family farm and as such, we want the boys to have the experiences that come with that while growing up. We understand that our way life may not be the one they choose for themselves as adults, and that is just fine. Regardless, these years on the farm will hopefully help instill in them the value of hard-work and the ins – and – outs of running a farm business. Developing a good work-ethic, running an ethical and honest business, learning how to take care of and provide for animals, keeping records, interacting with other producers, cattle buyers, etc, finding solutions to problems, thinking quick on your feet and being creative, trusting your instincts, learning about the cycle of life and death, and how some things just happen, with no rhyme or reason (we had this lesson last summer), learning to use tools and make fixes and repairs, learning to have faith and confidence in yourself and to never give up, and on and on and on……I feel that all of the above will prove to be invaluable to our children in their adult lives for whatever path they choose for themselves.
Jer, me and the boys are all INCREDIBLY ready to shed our layers of outerwear and enjoy the activities that late-spring and summer brings to us on the farm!
Happy Spring and safe calving for those that have started!
