Calving season is hard work.  It doesn’t have set hours, it doesn’t care about the weather, and sometimes the cows can just be plain mean about it. So, if a task is so cumbersome, why make it last forever? 

At Eden Shale Farm we have worked hard to condense our calving season to make it as short as possible.  If you look back to 2014, our first calving season at the farm lasted 105 days and we only had 32% of the calves born in the first 45 days of the calving season. It was a long, tough season and I wondered why we decided to calve in the spring.  
2015 was our first AI calf crop, and thus, we experienced some tightening of the calving window because of the synchronization protocol. That season we had 79% born in the first 45 days.  We have continued to AI every year and have been working on condensing the calving window even further.

We have also been pulling out the clean up bulls earlier to help eliminate the late season births. Those late calving cows typically won’t get AI bred and they tend to be tougher to breed back on time. We allow the cleanup bulls to stay with the cows for two heat cycles after AI, giving the cows three opportunities to get bred.  If they don’t breed in three attempts, we cull them from the herd.

In 2021 we got above 90% born in 45 days for the first time, and today we continue to make progress. The 2024 calf crop has been born in the tightest window yet. This year we achieved our all-time high of 96% born in the first 45 days of the calving season. The first 50% were born in 22 days.

I do not expect to improve on these numbers, but instead it is my goal to keep at least 90% or more of the calves born in 45 days.  Having all the calves born in such a tight window makes it easier to manage during calving. It also gives a lot of uniformity to the calf crop that follows them through to marketing.
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There are very few factors of the cattle business that you have complete control over. However, the length of your calving season is one of them.  It is up to you to manage your herd in a manner that gives you every advantage that you possibly can. 

 So far in Owen County we have had two weeks of winter weather.  The brutal cold and snow that everyone had in January, followed with a week of mud as all the snow was melting when it warmed back up.  Other than that, it has been extremely mild this winter.

It has also been much drier than normal.  During the month of February, we only received 0.9” of rainfall and March so far has only produced 0.4” of rain. While it has reduced the winter mud and it’s making calving easy, I do hold concern for the growing season and fear we may be going into it with a moisture deficit. Hopefully by the time you are reading this, things have changed for the better.

Calving season is off and running at a rapid pace.  The heifers started calving on Feb 11th and the cows started on Feb 20th.  We crossed the halfway point (52 calves on the ground) in 22 days. This year we are running about a week early based on where we were at this same time last year. We have had good luck so far too (knock on wood). One heifer did give birth to a dead calf, but then a cow gave birth to twins, so we are still averaging 100% with a live calf.  The rate at which the calves are being born will slow down now that we are reaching the end of AI sired calves.  Hopefully we continue to stay a week ahead of schedule and get the calving season wrapped up early this year. See picture 1 & 2 below for a glimpse at our 2024 calf crop.

The dry conditions have also been nice as it has made it easy to keep the cattle out of the mud.  We feed our cows hay in four different locations throughout the winter in a sort of rotational winter feeding system.  As the cattle calve, they are moved to new pastures and ultimately end up in one large field eating from the fence line feeders. This season we fed the first bale in the fence line feeder system on March 1st.  This allows those new calves to have a fresh field to come into that doesn’t have any mud yet.  This goes a long way into keeping the cow’s udders clean and therefore the calves healthy.  We will slowly add cows to these fence line feeders until the entire mature herd and their calves are eating hay from this structure. Picture 3 of the fence line feeder on March 1, 2024.
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I hope you too have good luck with calving season and that you have enough hay to see you through. As for now, if you need us we will be around the calving barn.