After a seemingly endless damp winter, it was nice to see some sun in recent days. Here are a number of our cow-calf pairs on some fresh spring grass. Calving season is winding down and has gone exceeding well, so far. Our last two AI sired calves were born in the last 12 hours and that leaves only 9 cows bred to Ferdinand left to calve. It looks like almost all of those 9 cows will calve by the start of May, so it looks highly likely that our calving season will run less than 2 months.
Calving season is here with three new calves on the ground. Here is the latest arrival just minutes after being born, standing on unsteady feet looking for its first meal. The proud mother is licking its newborn, helping it to dry off and contributing to the initial bonding between cow and calf. The improvement in the weather is much appreciated as warmer and dryer weather definitely improves conditions for calving as well as pasture forage availability. By the end of March, over half of our calves should be born and hay feeding will be winding down. This is always an exciting time of year, but even more so this year after a tough winter. The renewal of spring always invigorates the spirits of farmers and ranchers.
Whether the groundhog sees his shadow tomorrow or not, I know that spring and calving season are not too far away. After a pretty tough January, it is nice to see normal weather and a string of days without rain so that I can feed the cattle out on pasture without tromping up the soil. In this picture, our herd of bred cows and bred heifers have just been been fed hay on a new piece of fresh ground. I move the poly tape that you see on the right hand side of the picture each day so that I can feed on a new area. Almost all the cows and coming two year old heifers in this group are in their third trimester of pregnancy with the first calves due next month.
|
Archives
August 2018
Categories |