Calving nightmare

[woodland]

If I do help a cow at all for any reason (pull, malpresentation, milking out), she gets the "orange tag of death" before she leaves the chute. That way she leaves in the fall 100% of the time. I may cull the odd good cow, but I for sure get rid of the make work ones that way.

Sean that's a great idea about the tags. We just put them in the back of the calving book and a "hit" list on the fridge in the shop and they're gone at preg testing time. Seems like one always slips through the cracks though.

[woodland]

Grassfarmer the pictures you're showing look like here today or here on April 5 th. The space in between was mostly snow covered with temps of -5 to +5 with wind most days. The calves if they didn't get up in 15 minutes after hitting anything other than fresh straw involved a trip to the hot box. All of our quarters around here have 40 acres of bush and usually it's lower ground. I would think I'd lose 10% without much effort which would keep the coyote pack happy at least. It's probably been 15 years since we've fought mud like this and that time it didn't stick around as long.

We've thought about calving the Sandhills system but have struggled with how to move bred cows out of the pairs. Currently we move the pairs daily out of the field after tagging and it's easy enough. After a few days the calves get independent and you don't see them together much. How can you tell which has calved and who's close to calving with bigger numbers? Just curious.

Got another 1/4 inch today but at least got a nice rainbow out of it. Still weeks away from seeding here or harvesting.....

[grassfarmer]

Moving the breds out is the beauty of the Sandhills system Woodland. I just go at a time of a day when most everybody is paired up and resting, open a gate or fence up and call them to me. As it takes those with calves longer to get up and mobilized I generally have 90% of the breds through the gate before the first pair turns up. You have to work to get the last few but it still works pretty slick.