It's CALVING SEASON!!!

It’s my favorite time of year…. CALVING SEASON!!

  That’s when all the cows have their baby calves.  It’s a busy time for us but it is so fun to see them all being born.  They grow super-fast and they are running around in no time at all.  The average calf is born weighing somewhere between 60-90 lbs.  That might be more than some of my #Agintheclassroom 5th graders weigh right now!! 

This calf was just born to this 

first-time mama #595!

  He weighed 65 lbs.  Just perfect

 to get them both off to a great start!

There are lots of things that influence their weight at birth like the sex of the calf, the nutrition of the cow during her pregnancy, the weather conditions, and most of all, the genetics of the calf.  Bull calves (the boys!) generally weigh more than the heifer calves (the girls) but not always!!  If the weather is very cold during the winter, the cow will send more nutrition to the calf during her pregnancy and that can cause bigger calves to be born.  Also, if a cow gets a lot of protein in her diet, this can cause bigger birth weights.  Birth weight is highly heritable (easily passed on to their babies) so if a cow herself had a very large birth weight, she is more likely to have a big baby!  We try to control this by using bulls that have known birth weights on the lower side of average.  We want the cow to have the calf without difficulty so the calf is born quickly and easily.  Just like humans, an easy birth on mom and baby makes life A LOT easier for everyone involved and gets the little one off to a great start!!  The older cows can have a little bigger calf than a young cow, especially when it is her first one.  We try to be very careful when choosing which bulls we breed the younger cows to.

Once the baby is born and we know it has gotten milk from its mama a few times, we 

weigh the calf and put a tag in its ear.  The tag has the date of birth, the sire (or dad) of the calf, and the cow’s number.  This way we can easily match up the cow and calf whenever we are checking on them.  We keep detailed records on all of the cows and calves in our herd.  It is important for ranchers to keep records on everything!

    

Here we are weighing one of the new calves born to cow #225.  Sometimes the mamas are a little protective and don’t like you messing with their new babies.  This cow doesn’t mind but she stays close by and keeps an eye on us to make sure he’s ok!  We use a platform with a small scale on it to weigh the calves.  Not all ranchers take individual weights but most do tag their calves at birth. 

I just took this photo this morning (2/14/17).  This calf (#827) is about 45 days old.  He was the first calf born on our ranch.  You can see how much he has grown compared to the new calves shown above.  It doesn’t take them long to get growing!!  Can you see his milk mustache?  He obviously had milk for breakfast.  I hope you did too!!

Tag Making (featuring a cat photobomb...)

 If you've been around the site for a while, you've seen me post quite a few things mentioning ear tags and records at the farm.  When the baby calves are born, they are given a small, hand written tag with the same number as their mama.  But if they grow up and are chosen to stay in the herd and become mamas themselves, they need a new form of identification.

This is the point when we assign new numbers to the new replacement females.  Every ranch has their own unique identification system that works for them.  One common method is to start the number with the year the heifer calf was born.  In the video below, the females I'm making tags for were born in 2015 so they start with a "5".  We like to add an abbreviation for the ranch name if they are purchased from outside our herd or the dam's number if we raised the female ourselves.  We also add the sire of the animal.  This makes all the info really handy when you are working the cattle or checking them on grass.  

There are lots of brands of tags to choose from but I like these engraveable tags.  Watch this short video to see how I make a tag for a new cow in the herd.  And stay til the end to see the cat photobomb my tutorial!!  You just never know who might show up around here!!

It's actually a long, slow process but I shortened this up to give you a quicker version!  It would be faster to use a special tag marker but these are more permanent and there is no fading over time so it's worth a little extra effort up front!

Here is Gail giving the cow her new tag

What's in a name? (or number??)

Tags made for all calves born today!!

Ever wonder why cows have ear tags or what all those numbers mean on the tags?  Again, every operation has a different system but here's a quick overview of ours...

We tag every calf within 24-48 hours of birth.  The calf gets a matching number to their mama so it's easy to know who they belong to and to get them paired up quickly if necessary.  We also like to include the date of birth on the tag as a reference, and the middle set of numbers represents the sire or "dad" of the calf. 

Getting a weight on this new baby calf

In our case, we use artificial insemination to breed the bulk of our cows to elite genetics.  This means you can purchase a few units of a particular bull without buying the actual bull that can cost upwards of $50,000 to as much as $200,000.  It's a great way to improve our genetics in a cost effective manner!  Tracking these sire groups is very important from a data collection standpoint so having it on the tag is a great reference.

All of the information is also hand recorded on spreadsheets as each calf is born and later entered in the computer.  We collect individual weights on each calf to also help track performance of the cow, sire, and individual calf.  We use different colors of tags to tell the difference between the different breed groups we have but it can also be used for sire groups, cow groups, ownership groups, pasture groups, or lots of other different options.  There are as many tagging systems as there are producers so the trick is finding one that works for your operation!!

At a glance I know this little dude belongs to cow #3009, he's out of Western Cut (WC) and he was born 2/17