One of the most special parts of running a cow-calf operation, is seeing the bond between mama cow and her baby. I captured some sweet moments over the last few days and wanted to share here. These “babies” in the pictures below were born in spring-2019. This is our first year on a delayed-weaning schedule. Normally, the calves would be wintered separately on the farm. It has been interesting to observe their behavior this winter.
Through the years, we have retained many heifer calves. We currently have three mother-daughter pairs (both of breeding age) on the farm. I enjoy observing the interactions between mama cow and daughter. I will often see a mother-daughter pair laying side-by-side, basking in the sun, with their big, pregnant bellies! And one time, I watched a cow head-butt her way into the mineral barrel and proceed to block entry for any other cow. Then, I saw her daughter walk up and I wondered what would happen. To my delight and amusement, she let her daughter step right up to the mineral barrel and get a lick.
I am far from an expert on cattle behavior. But, I have spent the last almost seven years observing the behavior of our cattle on the farm and there is no denying that at least for our cattle, the mothers recognize their daughters, no matter how old the daughter is. I feel honored to capture such moments as the ones shown below. Makes me look forward to calving season #7!
Just one more lick and then you can go play with your friends…. January 27, 2020
This is the same mother-daughter pair as pictured above! May 2019 It’s been a long day, baby girl…. January 25,2020This is the same mother-daughter pair as pictured above! May 2019
Fences are a great invention. We like fences. Fences are good. They tend to keep our animals where they need to be. Emphasis on the word “tend”. As I shared in a previous post, moose and fences don’t really get along here on our farm. When a moose takes on an electric fence, the fence usually ends up flat on the ground!
We train our animals to respect the electric fence. To respect the presence of a fence, period. Sometimes, the electricity shorts out during a storm and the fence may not be hot anymore. We still want our animals to respect the fence and for the most part, they do. But, sometimes an opportunity presents itself and an animal tests a fence or disrespects the fence, and boom, you have a habitual fence offender. As we have discussed in previous posts, we employ a hay bale grazing system during the winter months to feed out our hay. The success of this feeding method hinges on our animals respecting the electric fences.
Let me share two stories with you, where the phrase, “What are you DOING?!Get out of THERE! “ makes an Oscar winning appearance…..
Story #1
Winter 2018/2019
During a routine morning check, I discover a cow (D9) in with the hay bales. Seems innocent, right? No, she was in with the hay bales BEHIND the electric wire. “What are you DOING?!Get out of THERE! “ No good. Not gonna fly here on the farm. It really is disheartening when one of your cows decides to start disrespecting the electric fences. Our entire operation depends upon our cattle respecting fences.
D9 went on to become a definite problem cow that winter. Luckily, the rest of the herd stayed far away from the trouble and did not dare join in. We gave her one more chance. Well, she blew through the second chance like a kid challenged to eat all their Halloween candy in one sitting. She met the challenge. Eventually, we added on additional wires to our fencing system to further protect the hay bales “behind the wires.” That contraption finally stopped her in her tracks. But, her ticket was already bought.
Once a cow becomes a habitual fence breaker, she has bought a ticket for a trip down the road. We have no room on our farm for any cow that can’t respect our fences. Not only will she slowly start to train younger members of the herd to disrespect the fence, she will COST US MONEY in the form of hay being eaten before schedule. She will throw the whole feeding regime off-kilter. Like I said before, we gave her a second chance, hoping it was just a fluke but she proved herself to have no respect for the fence until we built a wall of wire to stop her, pretty much.
D9 did go on to have a healthy calf that spring, which was great, but the trouble she caused throughout the winter was not forgotten. We sold her and her calf that summer.
Story #2
Winter 2015/2016
This fence breaker was a bit of surprise. She was part of our original herd of 10 cows. This was her 3rd winter with us, and she had never shown any disrespect for the fences. She was a big girl, bigger than what our vision was for our herd but you can’t be too picky when you are first starting out. She gave us many fine calves and never caused us any trouble. We kept her on, as others got sold-off.
Then, one day during the winter, we discovered her in the hay bales, behind the wire. “What are you DOING?!Get out of THERE!” Sigh…. And, that was that. It was like a switch flipped in her and fence breaking/jumping/ducking under the wire became her mission. She was a hard one to let go of because she had been part of our foundation herd. But, in times like that, emotions have to be put aside and what is best for our farm – our business – has to come first.
Take Home Point
Seriously consider culling any cattle from your herd that do not respect your fencing system. Don’t waste time and money on troublemakers!
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.
It was as if a light switch went off in their heads and all at once they started to repeat the mantra…..
we.must.graze.
we.must.graze.
we.must.graze.
It was a wonderfully warm day on the farm, with temperatures reaching into the 60’s. Such temperatures were such a sharp contrast to only a few weeks earlier when we were still battling negative wind chill and cold, blistery days.
I was in the kitchen, preparing lunch for my son, when IT happened. As I was standing over the sink, rinsing off my hands, I noticed movement from the window and to my shock, our entire herd of 20 cows were approaching the house (within the perimeter fence, though!), coming from our – can’t see from the house – back pasture.
For whatever reason, my first instinct was to reach out my hand as if to stop the herd. Funny how our reflexes work. Well, instead of “stopping” the herd, I ended up knocking over an opened jar of pickles. Fun. After cleaning up the mess and reassuring myself that all the gates were closed in what we call the “house pasture” and that the cows would not get out, I took time to simply enjoy watching their antics. For the past couple months they have been confined to our back pasture hay bale grazing site. Well, technically speaking, I guess they were not completely confined as the bottom gate to their pasture had been left open all winter. With the height of the snow drifts in front of that gate, though, those cows weren’t going anywhere.
Hello there, bare ground! So nice to see you again.
Well, as what often happens when the temperatures reach into the 60’s, those snow drifts started to melt and as what often happens with curious creatures like cattle, they started to explore and range. The realization that they were finally, after almost 6 months, walking once again on bare ground must have been both shocking and exhilarating for them.
I need to graze.
Do you know what a cow thinks when she sees bare ground? I don’t know about you but with our girls, I can almost see them saying it……
I.must.graze.
I.must.graze.
For our cows, grazing constitutes their entire feeding regime – whether spring, summer or fall pasture grazing or wintertime hay bale grazing. Although our cows are very domesticated, they have strong, basic instincts to graze pasture and to range as a herd. Despite the offering of several good quality hay bales at their bale grazing site, our cows ranged out of their pasture in search of fresh grass. I call that one strong grazing instinct. That afternoon, they explored every square inch of our house pasture, searching for that elusive patch of green grass. When they had exhausted their efforts, I watched them trail back towards the back pasture. One cow was lagging behind the herd, still sniffing around for grass and when she realized that the herd was gone, she kicked up her hind legs, bucked in the air and was off! I call that one strong herd instinct!
These cows of ours are definitely creatures of – grazing – habit! 🙂
Lounging in the spring sun!
I like to think that the cows are just as happy as us humans that winter is finally letting up!
