blizzard

[kato]

....

We started on Feb 3. We've got 110 on the ground so far. One frozen ear, three sets of twins. It's not hard if you've got facilities. If we were just starting out it would be different, but the sheds are there and weve got a good calving barn, so may as well have them earning money. Our yard handles cold and snow far better than mud anyway. This year worked really well because the warm spell hit right when they were calving the most. You know, that three week rush when the cycling cows were bred. It's calmed down now just in time for the blizzard. Whew! The cows are out there right now trying to call calves out of the shed while the calves just lay there all nice and dry and stare at them. One electric wire keeps the cows out of the sheds. The calves learn really fast about this shed business.

They grazed corn until a week before calving, and when they hit pasture the cows will be mostly bred and the calves will be grazing grass along with them . Works for us.

Whatever system fits your facilities and setup is the right one.

[farmaholic]

Kato. I felt sorry for those poor cows with protruding teats on engorged udders in frigidly cold windy conditions and the calves couldn't keep up to the milk production the cow had to offer in the beginning. Unless they were in an almost totally enclosed shed it could be brutal at times. At minimum they needed a damn good shelter with lots of bedding. Even the newborn calves could lose the tips of their thin ears after they were dry. But once the little buggers were a wee bit older its surprising how tough they were....just had to get them through that early phase unscathed and they were on their way. Grain fed Mamas sure helped on our farm especially if the forage wasn't so good.

[grassfarmer]

Generation5 - we start April @20th and stop 1st of June, on pasture (grass banked from last year). Don't have much to assist if you have the right cows under these conditions - maybe 2% max in a normal year. Winter calving comes at a huge additional cost in addition to the labour, bedding and housing facilities as your peak nutritional needs immediately pre-calving then peak lactation and rebreeding are all done on conserved feed during the coldest months of the year. Just never made any sense to me. We wean later and background everything rather than selling calves in the fall.
We are increasing our fall calving herd at the moment - always had some but want more. Calving mid Aug-end September gets you even better weather to calve in than late spring, don't tend to get the scours you do in spring, never get pneumonia issues at weaning and counter intuitively conception rates in November are excellent but this system requires that you have good grass through the fall. If the pasture was bare in July it's not going to work. Cows are milking through the winter this way but peak lactation is behind them when the coldest weather hits. Doesn't take great feed to bring the cows through and they have all summer to gain back condition. Selling light weight calves in May to go to grass is usually a good market.

[mcfarms]

Looks like our snow comes the next few days hopefully not as bad as the Sask and Man folks got with calving, dang cold here this morning though and everything's going in to dry off then out to lots of straw. A person needs to just run their calving to their operational needs and what market they want to hit. Hard to seed and calve at the same time if you are both the drill operator and the vet.

[perfecho]

Chose to calve in April/May instead of retiring...;-) Only 60 cows now, but not very much time into them....they are on 120 acres all winter and I let them calve there....don't have facilities there to help a cow if needed....In three years, think I have helped 2....even with heifers. We run purebred Gelbvieh, so I have to tag and weigh each one, but find that once a day...max two....this can be done. Biggest drawback is that bulls are sold in June-July or following year, but as I want to travel more, we are not keeping as many to sell. Its easy to have someone spend an hour every 4 days to feed cows, but trickier to have someone spend an hour to do chores around the yard feeding heifers and bulls.
May bring them home to a couple of 5 acre paddocks to calve in this year, but we will see.........

[grassfarmer]

So how does "barn calving" go when you can't get to the barn, LOL.

[ajl]

Well Grass you just learned why friends don't let friends move to Manitoba. You can keep that kind of snow there.

[grassfarmer]

This winter has been an anomaly by all accounts. Normally doesn't get anywhere like the snow here compared to the high snowfall area of AB I was in. When did you last see this much snow Braveheart? The seventies?

[stonepicker]

I may be wrong but i think we had snow like this in 96? Also 2011 i think, big snowdrifts on yard even on april 14, a moose stayed on my yard the whole day that day, snow was deep everywhere.

[Braveheart]

Well , in 2011 (I think) there was huge snowfall. Was stuck going out to the cows many times. There really is no normal. I think variable is normal.