Cattle Starter

Category: Calving

  • Observations from THE PASTURE: Week 1 – 2019 Calving Season

    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!

    Hello, baby – Calf #1!

    This mama cow was one that we had predicted would calve soon, and we made that prediction based on the progression and development of her udder, teats and vulva area.

    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..

    1. 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
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    The boys and I heading home for supper.

    Be sure to check in next Monday for more adventures and pictures from my Observations from THE PASTURE!

  • New Blog Series: Observations from THE PASTURE

    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“!

  • Thinking Ahead to the Beef Calving Season

    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.

    The Calving Bucket

    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.

    That Cow is Gonna Calve Soon! – Signs of the Onset of Labor

    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.

    Be sure to check out
    That Cow is Gonna Calve Soon! – Signs of the Onset of Labor for more information and plenty of pictures.

    In closing, here are a couple pictures from seasons past of births I was blessed enough to be able to witness.

    Incredibly zoomed in on my camera from
    my watch point.
    Zoomed in….
    Calf from delivery in picture above…

    Happy Calving!

  • Hello, World! Baby Calf Being Born.

    This post is bittersweet for me to write.  The afternoon that I originally planned on writing this post I ended up in the pasture, joyfully watching through binoculars one of our last cows give birth….that joyful moment quickly turned into a heartbreaking time for me as I held this beautiful stillborn calf’s head in my lap.  Sigh.  This was our first loss during calving.  It.hit.me.hard.  I understand that death happens on the farm.  I understand that sometimes the outcome of a situation is completely out of your control.  Even so, nothing could stop me from second-guessing myself, playing the what-if game and doing a play-by-play in my mind of every minute of that cow’s labor and delivery.   Our good friend and mentor was a wonderful resource to me that afternoon.  As I sobbingly explained the situation to him on the phone, he gently and wisely explained to me what had probably happened.  I learned a tough lesson that day and I paid a high price for it.   I hope I never have to encounter such a situation again but odds are, at some point in our farming future, I just may have to and I will be a bit more wise.

    Like I said, this was our first calving loss.  I was alone on the farm at that time, with Jer deep in the woods doing fieldwork and not expected home for another night and day.  I was four months pregnant and our 2 1/2 year old son was in the house, napping.  At that moment and for the next 24 hours until Jer came home, I had never felt so alone, so helpless and so lost.  Waking up that next morning, I felt as if I had been hit by a semi-truck.  When Jer got home that night, I explained what had happened.  He was then faced with the heartbreaking task of fighting off this calf’s fiercely protective mother and moving the calf to a proper place to bury.   The mother cow tried with everything she had to get that calf to stand.  She cried for her baby.  I cried for her.  It was a blessing when Jer came home and was able to put closure on the situation by burying the calf.  I had left the calf with its mom.   With me being pregnant and alone on the farm with my young son, I could not risk trying to fight off the mom and remove the calf by myself.  I love our cows but the safety of my son, myself and our unborn child comes first every time.

    Life goes on, though, right?  I still want to share the beautiful, joyful event that I witnessed a few weeks earlier.  This being the birth of our 15th calf.  The stillborn calf would have made #16.

    A little bit of background.  This is one of our three year-old momma cows. She produced a good calf for us last summer.  She was actually our last cow to give birth last year, in early-July. Hers was definitely a late calving and not preferable but we still got a good calf.  Amazingly, she cycled within 30 days of giving birth and was bred back immediately.  We actually saw the breeding and we could not believe our eyes!  Fast forward to a few weeks ago…I was doing an afternoon herd check and discovered this cow with the notorious bent tail and lots of diarrhea.  She was also acting very aggressive and bullying a number of the other cows.   Within the hour, she delivered a beautiful bull calf.  Our our 15 calves born this year, this was the first birth I witnessed in person and I feel very blessed for that, especially after what happened two weeks later.

    It is joyful events, like watching the birth of a live newborn calf, that helps to soothe the pain, and tip the scales back into the joy category.   A very wise man told me to not let those painful times rob me of my joy.   Looking back at the pictures below, I have to say that although I am sad at what happened, my heart is still full of joy at what we have and joy for what the future brings us.

    The below pictures were taken using a very high zoom!  To be able to capture this amazing moment, from a distance, was worth every cent our camera cost us!

    036042050054073078079082

  • Naptime, Baby Calves!

    I have always enjoyed taking pictures of our herd.   Looking through my lens, I witness the changing of the seasons, from lush, green pastures to snowy, white blankets.  I watch our herd grow and flourish.  And on the very special occasion, I watch a new life come into this world.   It probably comes as no surprise, therefore, that my very favorite season to photograph is what I like to call the calving and baby calf season!

    During one of my recent herd checks (we have two cows due to calve any day now), I discovered a good portion of our 15 baby calves curled up in a pocket of tall grass with their eyes squeezed shut, sleeping away the afternoon.  I tiptoed around and captured as many images as I could of this peaceful time.   It is hard to believe that just a month and a half ago we were anxiously awaiting the start of the calving season.  Oh how time flies on the farm!

    177 198 202 203 205 212 218