Sunday, March 9, 2014

Well we had gotten 3 calves before the extremely cold weather last weekend. Luckily the heifers quit calving while the weather was the coldest.  Then they started calving again.  The weather started warming, but slowly during the week.  We plugged along at one calf a day.  With fifty heifers to calf and fifty days to do it in we would get done.  It would just be slow.


Tammy caught these heifers sleeping one night during one of her checks.

On Thursday we moved the bulls to a pasture that is their spring pasture.  There is a shed there and a small springy creek for water that flows most of the year.

The older bulls know where they are going and know it is that time of year to go there.  So they march right along to get there.  Not much fighting and sparring going on.

Then we rode with the four wheelers down to the cows and brought them home to Ryan's.  They will not start calving for two more weeks.  Usually we wait long enough that a calf is born while the cows are in winter pasture.
But this year we brought them home early enough that no calves have been born yet.  We got this done one afternoon while Tammy watched the heifers at our home.
The next day it was colder and had froze the ground and we hauled three loads of heifer calves down to where the cows had come from.  They will be locked in a small lot of about 20 acres.  Hopefully the fence will hold them until they learn their boundaries. Once they figure out where the feed and water and shelter is they will be content and not try to get out.

While I was gone moving heifer calves Tammy was home calving.  That day we had six heifers calve.  All our pens were full as we tried to keep the new mothers and their young babies separate.  Fortunately the next day was to be really nice, so we could start letting some outside.


I have a few black cows and heifers and always like it when the calf they have is red.  So I have to show this to my friends that have black cattle.

The water in the creek has come up in the last few days.  Grand kids were over and we walked down to where the creek is overflowing around the culvert.  I think the ice has plugged the culvert.  So the water is really flowing around causing a water fall.


1 comment:

  1. I love spring. Water running in the creeks, calf babies and grand babies. What could be better!

    When you let them out there will be pods of red calves in the new, green grass. That's another beautiful spring sight. Hope your good weather holds and calving is easy.

    ReplyDelete