Early calves!

[cowman]

Well my son was a little slack at getting the bulls out last year and we got a couple of early calves with a few more likely. Not a big deal as we'll just keep them and their mommas in a corral with a shed and lots of straw.
We don't like to keep the bulls in a separate pen until absolutely necessary because who needs the extra work and grief?
These two calves were born outside and their mommas did their job and got them licked off, up and fed, and bedded down in the straw. I think I'd rather calve them now than in those ugly Apr/May storms.

[kato]

I agree. In 29 years, we have had two calves that were so badly chilled we had to bring them to the house to thaw them out in the tub. They were both born in April.

As long has you have bedding, and a shed, (and a cow smart enough to go into it!) early calving is our favourite. The January calves seem to have less scours and pneumonia than the later ones, at least at our place. I think the fact that the cows are more willing to stay in the straw when it's cold, and less likely to go off into a wet muddy corner to calve is a big help too.

The only big requirement is being willing to get up in the cold and the dark, and check on them. No pain, no gain.

[ivbinconned]

My feeding system consisted of rolling bales out with a truck mounted picker.
When calving season started I would feed once aday, keeping them hungry, and feeding them about 5.pm. This resulted in 90 to 95% of them calving between 6 am and 7 pm. This sure made life easier because temps were higher that time of the day.
I would walk through them just before feeding and if a wilder than normal cow looked real close then I would back up into the corral to roll out the bale making it easy to lock her up.
The prolonged drought in our area has put that all behind me. No cows.

[dwilliams]

We actually don't mind calving early either. We calve out 65 cows per year and actually disperse the calving from Nov.-July. I used to tease my husband about how the calving is. I would tell him just because we pay our mortgage monthly, it doesn't mean we have to calve monthly.