Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Anybody calving?

Ed, it's thawing out!



Barry, good luck and keep an eye on them ol' cows!



We started running out of room so dad and I made a few new clean/dry spots in different pens. We calve the heifers right in the 'yard' so it was time to do a little spring cleaning and sprucing up.




Looks like somebody needs to fix that windbreak......

No such thing as getting caught up, is there?

Ed

Then the mother gets the treatment.........ha!

Ed, always something!



Jim, no treatments necessary yet with this bunch of heifers. 1/3 of the way done and they've all been excellent mothers so far. Knock on wood!

Haven't had to pull one yet either, calving great. Knock on wood!

3 more tonight, all on the ground before I showed up. Two of them were small enough that I thought maybe they were a set of twins and perhaps a heifer that hadn't calved yet was trying to claim one but they all were from separate heifers.

And it's 25F outside, livin's easy!

Sam, I don’t miss those days & nights of pulling calves at all. I do miss the Checks we used to get from the auction, though

As of early this morning we are halfway done calving the heifers!

28/28 and haven't had to pull one yet. All good mothers.

I hate to jinx things but when it's going this good you start to wonder what is gonna happen to make it tough.....

Hopefully these calves stay healthy...............


Old cows are just starting, maybe 15-20 of them done.

Glad you are having good luck Sam.


We started calving this morning apparently........

Went out to find a dead calf.

I suspect it suffocated inside the placenta. I did not cut the lungs out to see if it did take a breath or not...but I suspect it did not.


Neighbor was tired of bucket feeding a twin so we brought it home.

We trade schit back and forth so we did not pay for it yet.

Day old calves are being listed for 500 bucks!



Still a lot of deep snow on the ground. Neighbor said they are having trouble with cows wandering out into the snow to calve or the baby calves are born on bare ground but then wander into the deep wet snow and die.

Jim, you know no matter what you do there is always stuff that just happens.

Good luck with the bum!


We've had a call or two from people looking for a bum calf but none here.

$500 is way too much or?

The market is down not up....

I am just an old guy I guess.

I used to buy bums once in a while for 100 bucks....for a nice one.

80 for a flop eared one!

Well I think $500 is too high.

Isn't that what they were going for back when the market was sky high?

I was thinking they should be in the $300 range this spring.

I wish I had a good demand for $500 bum calves...

I'd go buy a pen fulls longhorns and start a waiting list...

Longhorns are CHEAP down here. Hell, you can't get $500 for longhorn steers that weigh 600 pounds...

Baby calves here, beef, usually bring between $100-250 at the stockyard. The dairy farmers here will sell their bull baby calves, and usually have a waiting list. There are some Amish here who will buy every one they can, and bottle raise them.

Barry, we have a couple of local guys who raise Longhorns. One farmer really has a nice herd, if you're into them, and the other guy says he likes them because of their ease of calving, and the fact that their good mama cows.

I'll stick to Angus.

Yeah, if I'm gonna go to the trouble of a cow-calf operation, have them eat grass all year, worm, doctor, feed, hay...

I'm not raising a "miniature" anything. Or a longhorn.

I wanna raise something that will gain weight fast, and bring top dollar in the sale ring.

You can tell the people that just want the Ag Tax Exemption by whether they have longhorns on their place, or not...

My wife has a cousin who has more money that he has sense, and he got into the miniature horse business a number of years ago. Thought he was going to get rich, instead he still has them, and every time I see him, he's griping about what it costs to feed them.

If a person is going to get into a niche business such as exotic cattle, or horses, they damn well better have a market for them that they can depend on.

Miniature horses, donkeys, cattle.... All are worthless in my books.

I have a client I shred for that has 3 donkey's on his place. He asked me if I wanted to shoot them...

I declined as well. Pretty bad when you can't even find someone to waste a bullet on them...

I would if it was MY place though.

There are farmers here who have donkeys running with their cattle supposedly to keep the coyotes away. One of these fellows let me coyote hunt.......but didn't tell me the donkeys were there, and that they would chase people. I suspect he did it as sort of a joke, but it was a good place to hunt, so I came up with a plan.

The next time I went, I loaded my 22 revolver with rat shot, and when the donkeys got too close for comfort, I shot them in the azz. Only took a few times, and they left me alone. The farmer couldn't understand why those "bad" donkeys didn't chase me.

If he only knew.

Monday nights auction here in PA had a hereford calf bring $3.50/lb and a black baldie that brought over $4/lb... So I agree that the $500 for a calf is high, especially when you can buy a 500 lb feeder for the same $500 and not have the cost of feed into it.

500lb feeder calf brings about $1.70 a pound here right now. Some bring more.

Today I heard that bottle calves are going from $300-500.


Knock on wood we don't have any yet!

Maybe somebody knows something, and the cattle market is about to get back up to where it was 3 or 4 years ago.