Eden Shale Update- June

On April 26th we officially finished our 2025 calving season. It was a tough year to be calving in February, but we do it to ourselves, right?

This year we had less cows to calve than in recent years past. Last September we preg checked 114 head and ended up with 99 bred females (87% total herd conception). However, given the abnormally dry conditions of that time and the rising cull cow market, we choose to sell some of the older bred cows that had cullable traits. This ultimately got us down to 82 bred females to calve in 2025.

The heifers started calving first on Feb 21st. We had two of the first five calves born dead, both of which appeared to be very small.  We also lost one calf that was born alive, but the heifer laid down and spit him out under a gate onto a sheet of ice. We found him but could not get him warmed up enough and unfortunately, he perished as well.

Of the 17 first calf heifers, 13 of them had an AI calf (we AI bred 18 heifers, so that’s 72% AI conception). The cows AI conception is not able to be calculated because we sold 16 bred cows and we do not know how many of them were bred AI. However, we did get 39 AI calves on the ground from the cows.

Our calving window continues to be relatively short. If you remember we keep the cleanup bulls in for just two heat cycles after AI. This gives the cows three chances to get bred. Our total calving season this spring was 64 days. We had 61 calves (75%) in 30 days, and 74 calves (90%) in 40 days, and all but two were born in 54 days. In all we ended up with 39 steers and 36 heifers, and one set of twins.
​
Calving season is always a challenge, but it goes much smoother with good help. I want to thank our Farm Manager, Greg Cole for his numerous hours of checking, walking, tagging, feeding, and doctoring it takes to get a calf crop on the ground successfully. Without his efforts we wouldn’t be able to do this work at Eden Shale Farm. 

Farm Manager, Greg Cole checking on calves.

Calves in new hay feeding system