Along with the normal workload at the farm, we have found time to host several groups for tours and specialized events.

On March 6, we hosted producers from the Buffalo Trace area. There were 25 people in attendance from Mason, Fleming, Bracken and Rowan counties. We toured the farm and highlighted the winter feeding infrastructure and tire water systems.

On March 20, we hosted the Kentucky Junior Cattlemen’s Association’s Cattle Working Contest. That day we had 10 teams come to the farm and compete for a chance to advance to the state contest. It was a fun day. I want to thank all the coaches who prepared and brought teams to Eden Shale to compete.

On April 1, we conducted an ag agent training. We had 30 agents from all over the state attend. The day started with a session on forestry management/controlling invasive species with aerial application of herbicides using a drone. Sky Farm Drones was on-site demonstrating the technology. Steve Higgins with the University of Kentucky then did a session on winter feeding and tire waterers. The afternoon was spent with Chris Teutsch, UK extension forage specialist, and Katie VanValin, UK extension beef specialist, focusing on forage and grazing management.
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Since the first of the year, we have hosted 107 people from 30 counties at the farm. Thank you to all of you who have come out to support Eden Shale Farm and learned about what we do for the cattle industry in Kentucky. 

If we can claim success at anything at Eden Shale it would be condensing our calving season down into a very tight, controlled window. Calving season is hard and takes a lot of time and attention away from other chores. There is no need to drag it out for months on end. Over the past five years our calving window from start to finish has averaged 63 days, with a low of 56 days.

This year is right on par with that pace. The replacement heifers started calving on Feb 19th kicking out 12 calves the first week. During that time the cows started calving with the same frantic pace and on day 14 of the calving season we had 42 calves on the ground, which equals 58% of our calf crop born in two weeks!

As of this writing we are at day 20 of the calving season and there are 47 calves born (65%) in three weeks. We are on pace to finish calving in 30 days. However, we all know that will not happen as the cows slow down when they switch to the clean up bulls. It should still be a short calving season overall and hopefully be sub 60 days in total.

14 of the 25 replacement heifers calved AI which is 56%. We bred those heifers to two different bulls. 15 head were bred to the angus bull Architect. 10 of them calved AI which equals 66% AI conception. 10 head were bred to the Hereford bull Richmond. Only 4 of them calved AI which equals 40% AI conception. That is a low conception, however, with such a low number of females bred it is not enough to make any conclutions about the bull. The four calves that we have are nice calves so I wouldn’t be concerned to try him again.
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It is still too early to calculate the AI percentages on the cows. I will follow up with the final data of our calving season in a future article. Until then, we better get back to the calving barn.