Eden Shale Update-April

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.