blizzard

[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.

[sumdumguy]

We have seen some hum-dingers. In about 1965, 33 Highway was closed for days with snow banks over 7 feet. Power was out for days - the power line was down for miles. in 2011, I think April 3 or so eastern Saskatchewan experienced heavy wet snow storm that destroyed thousands of calves, heifers etc. I am always surprised if we get away without at least one good blast before spring.

[Generation 5]

had to dig into a pen of yearlings

[Generation 5]

couple more pics on top of ten foot drift

[Guest]

-37 here this morning , coldest day of the winter so far, not hearing a peep outta global warming cult