Spring at the Martin Family Ranch

With the encouragement of my three daughters, I’ve decided to start a blog. I will focus this year on writing about the life cycle of one calf here at Martin Family Ranch. My plan is to post monthly photos of the calf as the year progresses. For those of you who are familiar with cattle production, this will be nothing new. But for many of you who don’t have close ties to farm life, I’m hoping this will be an interesting and enlightening description of what is involved in producing grass-fed beef.

This is Cow #269 and her newborn calf. This is the second calf born to #269, who is the youngest daughter of #868, named Moon, the brown cow that is in the right corner of our website banner. Moon is no longer in our herd, but was the longest producing cow ever, here at Martin Family Ranch. Moon was born in 1998 in Iowa and was included in the dozen cows and heifers that were trucked to Oregon in 2002 to populate our herd here. She produced a calf every year of her life starting at two years of age, for a total number of calves produced of 15.

#269 gave birth to her calf on April 2. Typically, the birthing process takes about an hour or so. A cow will usually exhibit some signs of restlessness prior to calving and then separate herself from the herd. Within an hour of birth, the baby calf has typically gotten up and nursed. It is critical to the health of the newborn calf that it nurse in the first 12 to 24 hours, as the cow’s first milk, called colostrum, is full of antibodies that boost the calf’s immune system. This first picture was taken in the late afternoon, about 8 hours after the calf was born. As is mentioned elsewhere on our website, we welcome visitors to the ranch and would love to show you what is involved in producing our beef.