It's that time of year again....calving....a time we love and hate. M always says he's so excited to have that first (live) calf on the ground, but after the 300th one we're kind of over it! We had been gone to Daytona, and while we were gone R got the replacement heifers moved to the neighbor's and cut the first-calf heifers out of the herd and moved them into the corral so they could be watched closely.
We had some pretty decent weather when we first got back from Florida and on March 5th the temp was close to 50 degrees. Our first calf was born on March 6th when it was snowing, blowing and miserable. So nasty out, in fact, that I didn't attempt to go to work.
Every heifer and her calf go through the barn to make sure they are feeding and bonding properly. Unfortunately, with the weather so awful we didn't feel comfortable kicking them back outside. They put up a couple more pens in the old barn, but it filled up rapidly. I knew that the new barn sitting on top of the hill, unusable, would drive R crazy, and I was right. With the old barn full, M finally agreed that they were going to have to put up some temporary pens in the new barn to move pairs to so they hauled panels up there and moved pairs from the old barn to the new as needed. There are currently 14 pairs up there. There were downsides to using the new barn. First, there are no lights installed yet. Second, there's no water. There is a new well, but the pump isn't hooked up, and M wasn't going to work on it when the temps were in the single digits. So, they had to haul water by the bucketfuls. M figured he hauled 250 gallons a day. That's a lot of buckets.
We had to be extremely vigilant since a calf born in the temperatures we were experiencing was not going to survive any length of time without some intervention. R usually stays up until about 1:00 am and then checks at 3 and 5 and M is over there by 6. Anytime I happen to get up during the night I check the cow cams and alert R if I see anything. I think we're fortunate that we have only lost two to the weather.
It's always disheartening to lose a calf, but I've been pondering if it's worse to lose one when the price is high and a calf is worth almost $1200 at weaning or when it's low and they are worth under $700 because you need more of them to make the same money. Either way, it make M extremely crabby to lose one.
We had a January thaw and a February thaw with a lot of runoff and slop. Most of the snow was gone and things were drying up and last weekend we got at least 6 inches of snow. Today it was almost 50 degrees. While that felt wonderful, we're back to runoff and slop again which brings a different set of problems. We want to haul those pairs out of the new barn to a temporary pasture, but now it's almost too muddy to get the trailer up there. We may have to go early in the morning when the ground is still frozen.
It's always something in the cow business.......but we're never bored......just tired!
